The Call of the Wild:
Life lessons that are learned and thought
Introduction
As a student in Introduction to Literature I have had the opportunity to engage in reading and writing from the books listed: The Call of the Wild, Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s, and I know why the cage bird sings. These books have taught me that a message could be delivered in many perspectives. I have learned that a book is more than a story being told. It is up to the reader imagination to take then to that magical place. From these books I have choose to challenge myself to critic The Call of the wild by Jack London. It is an outstanding book that could be a positive feature for fifth grader to college students. The best thing about this book is that your view will change as you get older and wiser. For example I read this book in sixth grade and then again as a third year student and my views have change. Presently this book informs me that one’s life may end up different then the life they started. Also you change depends on the world that surrounds them such as people, environment, and life experiences just to name a few. I believe that The Call of the Wild is one of the best books written, because it educate the readers that throughout life you will continue to learn and be thought. In this paper I will explain Social Darwinist and the terms, technique I us to base the true agenda, and agree my thesis represented by quotes from the book. I will tackle number 3 for this take home midterm.
Social Darwinist and terms
Jack London writing technique influence his readers to consider Social Darwinist has an outlook on life. Merriam Webster’s explain Social Darwinist “to study of the human society, specifically a theory I human sociology that individuals or groups achieve advantages over others as the result of genetic or biological superiority. In class my classmates interpret it as “the survival of the fittest.” I agree with them, but I feel that you have to learn and gain from your mistakes. For example how could the strong survive without concurring adversity? London expresses it as, “And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead becomes alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed (page 40).
The novel, The Call of the Wild, follows a four-year-old mixed Saint Bernard and Scottish shepherd, named Buck. In the beginning of the story, Buck lives in the home of Judge Miller, located at Santa Clara Valley, California. In Santa Clara, Buck lives a luxurious life. At the time of the story, gold is discovered in the North. With this discovery, the value of large dogs like Buck escalated dramatically. The dog’s value was due most to their ability to haul heavy sleds through the abundant snow. Unfortunately, Judge Miller’s servant, Manuel steals Buck to sell him to a band of dog-nappers to pay for his accumulating gambling debts. The ring of thieves that bought Buck is gaining a secure banking by trading the dog to northern executives. Buck, who has had an easy life so far, does not adapt well to the terrain as the other canines do. Buck does not easily tolerate the confinement and mistreatment of his new authority. Buck’s gains the misconception, which then is an aide that any man with a club is a dominator and must be obeyed.
To escape the reality of this undeniably complicated world, would be something so distant to even consider, yet it would not be impossible to. The film “Where the Wild Things Are” unconsciously portrays an attempt at this escape through the leading role, Max and his fellow Wild Things. Max’s Journey could be considered a quest for sanity and morality in the sense that his everyday life initiated him to escape this reality and experience a much preferable life in which would be considered his safe space, where he was unknowingly faced with his own deepest aspects of himself through the personalities and conflicts of others leading him to further learn his place in the world.
Darwin’s theory on Origin of Species is crucial in understanding Bellamy’s novel because Bellamy critiques what is expressed in Darwin’s theory. Bellamy reflects the Utopian critique of social Darwinism where he tries to come up with positive alternatives in relevance to the Capitalist ethics of greed and Darwinian struggle for survival (Bellamy 4-26). The novel reflects future America where evolutionary love will operate without struggle for materials. These products focused in the utopian imagination were ridiculed by the social Darwinists. Bellamy’s novel downplays struggle for the fittest by encouraging evolutionary love and emphasizing on the role of cooperative human culture in evolutionary development. Therefore, while Bellamy tries to come up with a better world, Cha...
“Common Sense.” The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill , 2009. Print
The Call of the Wild, on the surface, is a story about Buck, a four- year old dog that is part Shepherd and part St. Bernard. More importantly, it is a naturalistic tale about the survival of the fittest in nature. Throughout the novel, Buck proves that he is fit and can endure the law of the club, the law of the fang, and the laws of nature.
Many people, especially those living in democratic regions of the world, perceive themselves as fundamentally free, as they are able to make their own choices. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, most of the citizens of the World State are considered to lack this kind of freedom. Unlike the citizens of the World State, John the Savage is presented as one of the flawed characters we are able to relate to. Consequently, by contrasting those around him, he is presented as a free character. However, the actual freedom of his choice is limited by the factors in his environment that shape his personality. As a result, John is very similar to the members of the World State and for the same reason people today are very similar to John. By creating the paradoxical character of John the Savage, who is both free and conditioned, Aldous Huxley presents the idea that complete freedom in humans is a flawed construct and that people are a product of their environments.
In the fiction of Huxley, the classical conditioning is one of the major concepts. In this science-fiction novel, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the place where humans’ serial production and education is given. Through Pavlovian conditioning, the social class and duties of these people are predetermined. They are perfectly healthy and immunized to all kinds of sickness, even to aging. (i.e.: peop...
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a fascinating tale of a utopia with no possible way of ever being disrupted. That is, until Alpha-Plus Bernard Marx brings a savage into their type of normalcy. Along with this plot, symbols and countless complex concepts make the book an educational experience worthwhile. Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps to show these concepts to an inexperienced reader. Some of the many literary elements the author includes are how all works are connected, how every trip is a quest, and of course, irony.
The people in a society are often a product of the presiding government’s policy. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, many of the citizens are artificially made and act like robots. However, in a reservation next to the new world, there exists a boy named John who was born and raised like a human. John is excited to go the new world because he believes that life will be better there. When John enters the new world, he sees many abnormalities that go against his beliefs, and the citizens call him a savage because he is not one of them. By juxtaposing John, the so-called savage, against the “refined” society, Huxley demonstrates the extreme extent of humankind 's atypical actions under the subjugation of a totalitarian government.
Darwin and Evolution are inextricably linked in the minds of most people who have had the opportunity to study them in basic biology. However, Darwin's theories of selection and survival of the fittest have been applied to moral, economic, political, and other cultural aspects of society. Dennett briefly touched on some of the political and social ramifications of Darwin's theories in the final chapter of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Other philosophers and thinkers have also adapted Darwin's evolutionary ideas, in order to apply them in a societal or cultural context. One great example of this adaptation of the biological concept of evolution, is the appearance of Social Darwinism during the 19th century.
The theory of social darwinism was first introduced to the public[1] in “A Theory of Population, Deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility”, an article by Herbert Spencer published in 1852. This work preceded the publishing of Darwin’s book by seven years, and “given the timing, it is curious that Darwin’s theory was not labeled ‘natural Spencerism’ instead of Spencer’s theory being labeled ‘social Darwinism.’”[2] Spencer’s article, though mainly focused on biology and the ways in which animal populations develop, does include an inkling of the social ideas he would later more fully examine. His main theory of population deals with survival of the fittest, a phrase he coins in this a...
Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we fear, a place outside of our comfort zone and, as McCandless' experience shows, not necessarily a physical place. To render to the call of the wild we must leave everything that makes us feel protected, and we must make ourselves completely vulnerable to the wild. McCandless and Buck show that in order to successfully respond to the call of the wild we must relinquish control and drop our guards, until ultimately the fear subsides and we find peace with ourselves as well as with our environments.
In this essay, I will discuss and define both speciesism and moral individualism according to Paola Cavalieri’s book, The Animal Question. Additionally, I will provide my opinion on which is the strongest argument for speciesism and why I still disagree with it.
Call of Wild is filled with positive and negative features of the story. It is a heartwarming tale but it is missing a climax and the pace of the story stays the exact same throughout the book. On the bright side the first chapter is told very well and vividly using words and phrases that make me feel as if I am placed right in the scene. Yet, the story just doesn't seem to be finished it feels as if there is a missing part. Jack London did a phenomenal job of describing the hunger, the pain and the setting of the dogs while they were in Alaska. I thought more detail could be added to parts of the story, for instance some of the smallest and least important facts are filled with the most detail. For example the gardener has almost a whole
Social Darwinism is the application of Darwin’s teachings outside of science, such as in biology, philosophy, religion, and politics, among other fields. While this connection may not seem to be applicable, the concepts of Darwinism can be found in many areas of society. As a result, social Darwinism has had a significant impact on the development of Western civilization simply because the concepts of Darwinism can be applied to society in the ways they can