The Call of the Wild: Buck learns to adapt. “Adaptability is being able to adjust to any situation at any given time”, said John Wooden . A theme for Jack London's “The Call of the Wild” is adaptability is essential for survival. At the beginning of the book Buck realizes he has to adapt to the North. First, Buck learns how to survive from people.
Buck is a dog from Santa Clara Valley, a dog who lived in a huge house. He was the king of the property and was petted, fed well and treated like a loved and cherished dog. Buck was living a pampered life, where he had everything he want until the day where he was stolen, sold, and brought to an unknown environment. Buck has went through a change where he had to adapt quickly for survival. A place where he had to steal to eat, defend himself in order to survive.
Jack London wrote The call of the Wild in 1900 and had it published 1905. The main character, Buck a St Bernard living the good life until he gets stolen and taken to Alaska. After that he is made a sled-dog who is sometimes beaten and starved. But in the end this is a transformation physically and mentally. The story takes place in Miami, Florida for a part of the story until he is stolen and taken to a remote part of Alaska.
Call of the Wild starts with introducing Buck, a mix breed between a St. Bernard and a Sheepdog. He lives on the wealthy estate of Judge Miller. Buck is soon sold into sled dogging and is sent to the Klondike region of Alaska and Canada. In Jack London’s Call of the Wild, the theme is that Buck not only uses a growth mindset to survive, but he also uses it to thrive.
The difference in climates and environment creates different obstacles and things that have to be learned in order to survive in the wild(Napierkowski). Besides just the setting he also had to face the wild. A theme of the story is civilization vs. the wild. His life was changed over a period of time. The title itself says “The Call of the Wild”.
In the novel, The Call Of The Wild, by Jack London, Buck is a domesticated dog adapting and trying to survive in the wild. The topic in this novel is perseverance since the author constantly provides many hints throughout the novel that proves that the topic in this novel is perseverance. It can be seen during the time Buck perseveres in trying to adapt to his situation and understanding his surroundings. Also, when he preservers through all the pain and suffering that is constantly leaking around him and Buck is sometimes rewarded for persevering through the hardships that follow day by day. Thus the theme in the book is in order to be rewarded, one must persevere.
More civilized dogs like Newfoundland’s and even huskies find primitive counterparts in the wolves whose howl at the end of the story was the very sound of the wild. London “doubles” the story into opposing worlds. Buck begins in the waking world of reality and ends in a silent, white wasteland which was also the world of dream, shadow, and racial memory. Buck survives to embrace life at the end of a book informed by death as the horrifying, rhythmic reflex of an entire order of things. Life in The Call of the Wild was a survival built on the death of other living creatures.
Have you ever wanted to live in Alaska and travel all through the Yukon delivering mail, panning for gold, or go hunting for moose? In the adventure novel Call of the Wild by Jack London, the main character Buck goes from pampered pup to wild beast, Buck travels around Alaska going from city to city, fighting to survive in the dangerous Yukon. Slowly throughout the book, Buck’s permeative instincts come out and isn’t like a house dog. He becomes tougher and learns how to hunt, dig holes in the snow to sleep in and learns to never get knocked down in the fight. All throughout the book, Buck slowly turns into a wild dog and lets his inner wolf come out, one way he does this is he digs a hole and learns that he 's not going to have a warm bed anymore.
For once Buck learns to adjust, “his development was rapid. ” Experience is his teacher, like, Sister Carrie’s or Stephen Crane’s Maggie. But his morality was not questioned by the reader because Buck is a dog. London chooses to ignore the moral implications of Buck’s thievery. For Buck’s “new” way of life was new to him only momentarily, London closes out Buck’s discourse on the law of club and fang.
In The Call of the Wild the author, Jack London, describes Buck as “king over all… things”. The narrator refers to him in this way to show the dominance and superiority Buck has in the area he lives in. In multiple lines, he is reported to have done many things from hunting to guarding children. It is also said that he lived a life full of power as evident from this line: “…he had lived the life of a stated aristocrat…”. Although Buck is not really a king, he still has the traits of being a king, thus the reason he is referred to as one.
Have you ever heard the calls? Buck sure has. In the novel The Call of The Wild by Jack London, Buck is a large st. Bernard that lives in the beautiful Santa Clara Valley with Judge Miller. As the story goes on Buck gets dognapped and sent to the man in the red sweater. The man in the red sweater is also known as the crack dog doctor.
Mark Twain believes that dogs are superior to man because out of all animals, man is the only one that is cruel enough to inflict pain on others just for the pleasure of doing it. Twain’s short story “A Dog’s Tale”, written in 1903, displays these beliefs and is done so from a dog’s point of view. This unusual take on the story is used to help convey the theme that one shouldn’t assume the others will do the same for them. The story includes literary elements such as characterisation, structural irony and a plot and conflict. It is a story of a loyal and heroic dog which unfortunately ends in an ironic twist of fate.
What about animals such as Buck and what about their treatment? You may ask, “who is Buck?” Buck is a dog, from the book The Call of the Wild, that undertook a great mission to rebel against an animal that treated him unfairly. That animal is called Spitz. Spitz is a pack leader and he bullied Buck very much.
Buck’s great genes and extensive training have allowed him to become more agile than any foe he is pitted against. So when Jack London is talking about Buck fighting a pack of wolves he say “he was everywhere at once” meaning that buck is so quick to strike that there is nowhere that the wolves aren’t vulnerable. The inclusion of this hyperbole gives us a sense of how Buck has evolved from a simple house dog to a wild killer of great strength.
“On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whiplash and of harsh and menacing throat sounds that threatened the whiplash.” It is also thought that the wolf only stayed around the man for his food or supplies while another theory is that the wolf has a loyal side to it. All in all this is a story that teaches you to appreciate your surroundings and that the wilderness can be unforgiving and harsh. “The thought of death drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong.