Call of The Wild by Jack London

 

Call of The Wild

Call of The Wild is a realistic fiction book set in the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush. The book is about a dog named Buck who soon becomes a sled dog. Although the book is in third person London does a good job of giving enough information to usually tell the character’s motives. It's a unique book as not many books are about a sled dog during the Klondike gold rush.
The book starts with the main character, Buck, who is a dog that lives in California. Buck then gets stolen by the gardener of Buck’s owner’s estate. To pay off gambling debts, he sells Buck to a man. As the title hints, the book is about how Buck becomes wilder. This is seen throughout the book as he progressively gets fierce and less domesticated becoming more like a wolf. This transformation is first seen after Buck gets stolen. After Buck gets stolen he is put in a crate shipped to Seattle where a somewhat well-known scene happens. Buck is taught “the law of club and fang” when he tries to attack his handler but is stuck down multiple times with a club. Although this makes Buck become obedient to anyone with a club it does make him start to become wilder. He starts to realize that he actually cannot do anything he wants and must adapt to his situation. 
Soon after being taught “the law of club and fang” Buck is sent on a boat to Alaska and is now on a sled team with other dogs. This first experience of being on a sled team starts to make Buck tougher. Buck eventually kills the lead dog and becomes the new lead dog. Buck is then sold to someone else and starts having to make longer sled trips which start to wear him out. This not only has significance to Buck as he is now tougher from the long trips but additionally, he starts to realize he may die. Although there are many ways to die in the Yukon, Buck starts to realize it when another sled dog becomes terminally ill and ends up getting shot.
Buck is then sold again but this time to people who have no experience with the frigid north. They get an entire team of fourteen dogs thinking they will go faster. Due to the group's foolishness, they feed the dogs too much which makes them run low on food later, starving nine of the dogs to death so that only five are left including Buck. The group has to cross a river. Buck knows that the river is unsafe due to the ice being too thin to cross so he refuses to go. The leader of the group whips him without mercy until an experienced outdoorsman cuts Buck free. The group along with the four remaining dogs attempt to cross the river but end up all falling in, quickly dying to the freezing cold river. 

The outdoorsman who let Buck free takes Buck under his care. Soon after Buck kills a man by ripping out his throat. Buck is starting to become more and more like a wolf at this point. When the outdoorsman that was taking care of Buck falls in the river Buck saves him and gains his trust. The outdoorsman and a couple of his friends go on an expedition to find the “lost cabin”. While searching for this one day Buck comes back to the camp to find that his owner and the rest of the group had been killed by Native Americans. To avenge his owner Buck kills a few Native Americans. Buck soon realizes he has no place to go and is tied to no owner so he returns to the wild where he ends up fighting a pack of wolves and winning. At the end of the book, Buck answers the call of the wild.
Overall I would recommend this book if you are looking for a good read. It is not only a unique book but is interesting as well. Although a lot of the book is focused on Buck and some of the other dogs in the sled team, the book shows what it was like during the Klondike gold rush in the 1890s. I found this aspect quite interesting as I did not know much about the topic. The book showed how many people came to the Yukon with no experience hoping to become rich or pay off their debts like a lot of them had. Additionally, it was intriguing to see what it was like from the perspective of a dog and how they had to fight with other sled dogs to gain status. The book overall has an interesting plot that lets you see the development of Buck throughout the book. Additionally there was a movie made about this book which is somewhat bad. The movie is not accurate to the book and is nowhere near as good. The movie removes many of the great aspects of the book. I do not recommend watching the movie.

-Ross