-
A Review of The Call of The
Wild
I About Jack London
Jack London(born Jan. 12,
1876, died Nov. 22, 1916), whose life symbolized
the
power of will, was the most
successful writer in America in the early 20th
Century.
His vigorous stories of men
and animals against the environment, and survival
against
hardships were drawn mainly
from his own experience. An illegitimate child,
London
passed his childhood in poverty
in the Oakland slums. At the age of 17, he
ventured to
sea on a sealing ship. The
turning point of his life was a thirty-day
imprisonment that
was
so
degrading
it
made
him
decide
to
turn
to
education
and
pursue
a
career
in
writing. And his experiences of
searching for gold in the Klondike
(in
Canada)
left
their mark in
his stories. His work embraced the concepts of
unconfined individualism
and Darwinism
in its exploration of the laws of nature. He
retired to his ranch near
Sonoma, where
he died at age 40 of various diseases and drug
treatments.
Jack London is best known for his books
The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and
The
Sea-Wolf,
and
a
few
short
stories,
such
as
Build
a
Fire
and
White
Silence.
their
cultures:
the
Yukon,
California,
and
the
South
Pacific.
He
experimented
with
many literary forms, from conventional
love stories and dystopias (
反乌托邦，
政治讽
刺小说
)
to
science
fantasy.
His
noted
journalism
included
war
correspondence,
boxing
stories,
and
the
life
of
Molokai
lepers.
A
committed
socialist,
he
insisted
against
editorial
pressures
to
write
political
essays
and
insert
social
criticism
in
his
fiction.
He was among the most influential figures of his
day, who understood how to
create
a
public
persona
and
use
the
media
to
market
his
self-created
image
of
poor-
boy-turned-success. He left over fifty books of
novels, stories, journalism, and
essays, many of which have been
translated and continue to be read around the
world.
II Plot
Buck
is
a
dog
who
leads
a
comfortable
life
in
a
California ranch
home with
his
owner, a judge, until he
is stolen and sold to pay off a gambling debt.
Buck is taken
to Alaska and
sold
to
a
pair
of
French
Canadians who
were
impressed
with
his
physique. They train him
as a sled dog, and he quickly learns how to
survive the cold
winter
nights
and
the
pack
society
by
observing
his
teammates.
Buck
is
later
sold
again and passes hands
several times, all the while improving
his abilities as a sled
dog and pack
leader.
Eventually, Buck is sold to a man, his
wife, and her brother who know nothing about
sledding
nor
surviving
in
the
Alaskan
wilderness.
They
struggle
to
control
the
sled
and ignore warnings not to travel
during the spring melt. As they journey on, they
run
into
John
Thornton,
an
experienced
outdoors
man,
who
notices
that
all
of
the
sled
dogs are
in terrible shape from the ill treatment of their
handlers. Thornton warns the
trio
against
crossing
the
river,
but
they
refuse
to
listen
and
order
Buck
to
mush.
Exhausted, starving, and sensing the
danger ahead, Buck refuses. Recognizing him as
a remarkable dog and disgusted by the
driver's beating of the dog, Thornton cuts him
free from his traces and tells the trio
he's keeping him. After some argument, the trio
leaves and tries to cross the river,
but as Thornton warned the ice gives way and they
drown.
As Thornton nurses
Buck back to health, Buck comes to love him and
grows devoted
to him. Thornton takes
him on trips to pan for gold. Thornton and his
friends go to
their
camp
and
continue
their
search
for
gold,
while
Buck
begins
exploring
the
wilderness around them
and begins socializing with a local wolf pack. One
morning,
he returns from a three-day
long hunt to find his beloved master and the
others in the
camp
have
been
killed
by
some Yeehats
(Native
Americans).
Buck
finds
some
of
them in the camp and kills them to
avenge Thornton, later finding other members of
the tribe, then returns to the woods to
become alpha wolf (
领头狼
) of
the pack. Each
year he revisits the
site where Thornton died, never completely
forgetting the master
he loved.
Buck, a
powerful dog, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog,
lives on Judge Miller’s estate in California’s
Santa Clara Valley. He leads a
comfortable life there, but it comes to an end
when men discover gold in
the Klondike
region of Canada and a great demand arises for
strong dogs to pull sleds. Buck is
kidnapped by a gardener on the Miller
estate and sold to dog traders, who teach Buck to
obey by beating
him with a club and,
subsequently, ship him north to the Klondike.
Arriving in the chilly North, Buck is
amazed by the cruelty he sees around him. As soon
as
another dog from his ship, Curly,
gets off the boat, a pack of huskies violently
attacks and kills her.
Watching her
death, Buck vows never to let the same fate befall
him. Buck becomes the property of
Francois and Perrault, two mail
carriers working for the Canadian government, and
begins to adjust to life
as a sled dog.
He recovers the instincts of his wild ancestors:
he learns to fight, scavenge for food, and
sleep beneath the snow on winter
nights. At the same time, he develops a fierce
rivalry with Spitz, the
lead dog in the
team. One of their fights is broken up when a pack
of wild dogs invades the camp, but
Buck
begins to undercut Spitz’s authority, and
eventually the two dogs become involved in a major
fight.
Buck kills Spitz and takes his
place as the lead dog.