野性的呼唤读书笔记英文版之12 Important Quotations Explained

Important Quotations Explained

1.

During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in

himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation.

This quotation is from the beginning of Chapter

I

, “Into the Primitive,” and it defines Buck’s life before he is

kidnapped and dragged into the harsh world of the Klondike. As a favored pet on Judge Miller’s sprawling

California estate, Buck lives like a king

—or at least like an “aristocrat” or a “country gentleman,” as London

describes him. In the civilized world, Buck is born to rule, only to be ripped from this environment and forced to

fight for his survival. The story of

The Call of the Wild

is, in l

arge part, the story of Buck’s climb back to the top

after his early fall from grace. He loses one kind of lordship, the “insular” and “sated” lordship into which he is

born, but he gains a more authentic kind of mastery in the wild, one that he wins by his own efforts rather than by

an accident of birth.

2.

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. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It

was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a

fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.

This quotation is taken from late in Chapter

I

, “Into the Primitive,” just after Buck has been beaten repeatedly by

one of his kidnappers. Each time he is clubbed, Buck leaps up to attack again, until finally the man knocks him

unconscious. This incident is Buck's introduction to a new way of life, vastly different from the pampered

existence that he led in the Santa Clara Valley. There, civilized law, and civilized morality were the ruling

forces

—

symbolized by the fact that his first master, Judge Miller, is a

judge.

In the wild, though, Buck comes to

terms with “the reign of primitive law,” in which might makes right, and a man with a club (or a powerful dog) can

do as he pleases to weaker creatures. In this scene, Buck is mastered by the man with the club, but he learns his

lesson well and soon comes to master others.

3.

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated

generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs

ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. . . . Thus, as token of what a

puppet thing life is the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again. . . .

This quote, taken from Chapter

II

, shows that as Buck fights for survival in the harsh world of the Klondike, he

relies increasingly on buried instincts that belonged to his wild forebears. The role of this atavistic

development

—“atavism” refers to the recover

y by an animal of behaviors that belonged to its ancestors

—

points to

one of the central themes of London’s novel, namely, the way that primitive instincts and urges persist beneath the

veneer of civilization. Throw a soft, civilized creature (human or animal) into the wild, London suggests, and if he

survives, he, like Buck, will come to depend on the same instincts that guided the life of his primitive ancestors.

“The ancient song,” in his phrase, is only waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.