In The Call of the Wild written by Jack London an easy going domesticated dog is reminded of his roots and transformed into a hard working, wild and free dog. Buck understands what it is like to live a leisurely life, but after his trip to the North he never looks back on that life with disrespect. Bucks newfound life changes him overall as a dog, almost to a point where he has to be reminded that he is a dog and not some wild beast. The Call of the Wild shows the life of Buck while using many different literary methods.
Bucks long and hard life journey can easily be compared to that of Odysseus in The
Odyssey by Homer. Buck is sent on a hard journey to find out what kind of work he must really do, and when placed in the hands of countless bad owners he makes the best of the situations just like Odysseus was able to defeat all of the monsters that crossed his path. Buck then returned to a home like setting only to find it difficult for him to fit in from a tough life on the road, how
Odysseus was unrecognized by all but his dog. Finally Buck got what he thought was to be ‘home’ with John Thornton until tragedy strikes and Buck finds the wolves. Buck is finally ‘at home’ when he finds the great timber wolf pack and runs with them, leading and understanding life.
Jack London also uses personification throughout The Call of the Wild. Buck the dog is given many human qualities, mainly because the book is a biography of him. The main personification trait that Buck experiences is the feeling of love towards John Thornton. Buck has a typical dog to human love, but with John Thornton Bucks love is undying and painstaking.
When Buck takes John Thornton’s hand into his mouth and give a long squeeze with his teeth it is ...
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...other as well as an desire for each other’s love. John
Thornton gave Buck the freedom to roam the forests and gain the deep internal knowledge he needs to survive in the forest, allowing Buck to continue the primitive figure in the seeming infinite north. The caveman like John Thornton saves Bucks life and allows him to continue out his life as a primitive force, one of the highest regarded ways to live life.
Throughout The Call of the Wild there are many examples themes, symbols, and personification as well as two main characters that are the exemplar of primitiveness. Buck lives on with the wolf pack being a ghost-dog wolf-dog leader, scaring the Yeehats, and giving an understanding of the highest way to live life, being primitive. Jack London illustrates how a house dog goes from leisure to tough work and allows understanding to be found throughout words.
One of Buck's Internal Conflict is choosing between a master or a wolf pack(love of John Thornton and the Call of the wild).
At the beginning of the novel Buck is portrayed as a pampered house-dog who is the head dog at
At the beginning of the book, Buck learns how to act in the north. First, he learns the “Law of Club”. For example, the man in the red sweater bashes Buck into submission with a club. Since, seeing
Just like a wolf, Buck begins to send a long howl to the stars, just as his ancestors did. “And when, on the still, cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at a star and howling down through the centuries and through him” (London 26). This quote explains how Buck began to howl, showing that he has regressed from being a domestic pet to a wild wolf-like dog. Before when Buck was a pet he didn’t howl or have the urge to, but once exposed to the North land, Buck is influenced to act more like a savage
In the intriguing classic, The Call of the Wild, Jack London writes in anthropomorphism telling the bare truth that survivors are those who adapt to changing circumstances during the Klondike Gold Rush. As the book evolves Buck matures and does have to adapt from his old ways so that he can survive. In the beginning Buck was a pampered half St. Bernard and half Scottish mix from Santa Clara Valley and quickly learns that sled dogs have to fight to survive. When Buck watches his fellow companion Curly die because another husky rips her to pieces he learns the “law of the club.” Also, Buck starts developing his dog instincts as he sacrifices his life for his owner John Thornton.
First, we're going to talk about Buck's strength through the things that he faces and how he adapts to the circumstances. Being that Buck's character doesn't have any speaking parts one get a true sense of how Buck feels through the imagery throughout the story As the story begins we meet Buck, who is a spoiled, carefree and loved pet to Judge Miller in the "sun-kissed" Santa Clara val...
London writes that until Buck’s kidnapping he had lived a life fit for a king. He was a loyal pet treated with respect and love. When Buck was kidnapped and sold into a sled dog team it was clear he was far out of his element. “He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club” (12). In this quote from the book, London depicts Buck learning that if he was to be
As he starts to understand the law of club and fang, Buck lands in Dyea Beach, his first night at camp Curly (A fellow dog purchased with Buck by Perrault) dies.When the dogs forsaken Curly’s body after the fight, “But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, this word half-breed standing over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came to book to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down that was the end of you” (London 32). When Curly dies in a dogfight against a more experienced husky, he was torn to shreds by other surrounding dogs. This is called the wolf-manner of fighting. The wolf-manner of fighting is not only to strike and leap away, but to win by strength, decisiveness, and to gain from other weaknesses. Curly was the first dog that Buck would see killed, he is so traumatized by this event that he promises himself that he would never lose. By that changing himself to represent less a follower and more of leader, and as much as he tries not to develop attachment to humans or other dogs. As Buck changes and adapts to his new environment he keeps this promise and figures out a ways to harness his power. Later on, the Yeehat tribe invaded John Thornton’s camp and killed him, Buck leaps into action and kills a couple members
In the final pages in The Call of the Wild, Buck is faced with the choice to answer the call or stay with John Thornton. Through every challenge, Buck has had, it was easy to answer the call, but love for a man only grew stronger. It was hard for Buck to disentangle his thoughts. It states "But in spite of his great love he bore for John Thornton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active" (59). The only thing holding back Buck from answering the call was John Thornton. His primitive ways were still with him even if he was with John Thornton. Fate played a huge rule in assuring Buck what to choose because it was fate that John Thornton
“In Buck’s bad dreams, Jack recorded his own childish fears of cold, deprivation, and solitude, as well as compulsion always to be free and roving…” (Sinclair 49). While in John Thornton’s company, Buck dreams of a primal man with whom he walks through the forest, on the edge of the wilderness. The dreams beckon to him and encourage him to give in to his instincts. They fill him with “a great unrest and strange desires” and cause him to feel a “vague, sweet gladness” (London 71). His visions both frighten and intrigue him, until eventually he pursues the call and ventures into the wild. London feared being alone, but knew he could not thrive in a confined, suburban life. This fear, London believed, is rooted in all men. They are subdued by their fear, yet it also lures them to return to their beginnings. “…Jack believed that people respond to the literature of fear and nightmare, because fear is deep in the roots of the race. However civilized men think they are, fear remains their deepest emotion” (Sinclair 49). Buck is a civilized dog who turns into a savage beast. When Buck understands his deep-rooted fears, he is able to ‘turn back the clock’ and complete his transformation into a primordial animal. London explains that this transformation can be undergone by all men if they conquer their fears as Buck
“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive” (Jack London). In Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” Buck was an average domesticated dog from a loving family, until he was kidnapped and forced to become a sled dog during the Alaska Gold Rush. There he was obligated to adapt to the harsh conditions of the wild if he wished to survive. Buck was a very intelligent dog and was able to learn by watching the native dogs, if he hadn’t then he would not have been able to survive.
As a child London lived in poverty while his main character, Buck, “had lived the life of an aristocrat” in his young life (London 2). This demonstrates that
The message Jack London conveys in “The Call of the Wild” is the supremacy of the wild over the artifice of human-made conventions. This is seen through the evolution of the book’s central character, Buck, as he is stolen away from the human-made convention of a man-pet relationship and into the deep wild of the Yukon wilderness on both a figurative and geographic sense. Along this journey, as he is passed from one human owner to another, Buck encounters the invaluable laws of the wild: primitivism, efforts toward survival, and the value of being the fittest of his species. He learns loyalty can be a prized commodity in surviving the unknown, and he learns the ultimate lesson of the supremacy of the wild, as seen at the end
One of the factors that contributes to this theme is how Buck is taken from his lush and luxurious life and savagely shown the new order of things in his life. He choked or beaten for any transgressions, he would be denied food, he would
Armbruster, K. (2002). “Good Dog”: The stories we tell about our canine companions and what they mean for humans and other animals, 38 (4), 351, 26. Retrieved from http://www.siue.edu/PLL/