FIRST PARAGRAPH: “Buck did not read newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal”
Like most of Jack London’s writing, his own life was as dramatic as the fiction he wrote. The Call of The Wild was an instant sensation from the moment it was released in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush when strong sled doges were the way the work was done.
Buck is the novels main character and he is stolen from his comfortable home in Santa Clara Valley, California. His father was a huge St. Bernard, his mother was a Scotch Shepard dog and he weighed 140 lbs. He is eventually sold as a sled dog in Alaska. He learns fast and is much smarter than the other dogs and many of his handlers. As he learns to fight for survival and dominance he senses his own primeval influences that take him back maybe even the beginning of time. He seems to master the life as a sled dog but the feelings he has for the wild call him and he eventually emerges as a leader in the wild.
London’s story from Buck’s point of view is masterfully done.
