Rustum Daniel Waldo H.

Doctora BEED/SED

The Call of the WILD

As a child, my favorite book was the Call of the Wild.

The Call of the Wild is a short adventure novel by Jack London published in 1903 and set
in Yukon, Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high
demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck. The story opens at a ranch in
Santa Clara Valley, California where Buck is stolen by the gardener's assistant and sold to fund
the latter's gambling addiction, and shipped to Seattle. Put in a crate, Buck is starved and ill-
treated. After he was released he attacks the "man in the red sweater" but is badly beaten and
taught to respect the "law of the club".

Buck is then sold to a pair of French-Canadian dispatchers from the Canadian government,
François and Perrault, who take him with them to the Klondike region of Canada. There, they
train him as a sled dog. From his teammates, he quickly learns to survive cold winter nights and
the pack society. A rivalry develops between Buck and the vicious, quarrelsome lead dog, Spitz.
Buck eventually beats Spitz in a fight "to the death". Spitz is killed by the pack after his defeat by
Buck, and Buck eventually becomes the leader of the team. The team is then sold to a "Scottish
half-breed" man working the mail service. The dogs must carry heavy loads to the mining areas,
and the journeys they made were tiresome and long. One of the team, a morose husky named
Dave, becomes sick and eventually has to be shot to end his misery.

Buck's next owners are a trio of stampeders (Hal, Charles, and a woman named Mercedes
from the United States), who are inexperienced at surviving in the Northern wilderness. They
struggle to control the sled and ignore warnings that the spring melt poses dangers. They
overfeed the dogs and then starve them when the food runs out. On their journey they meet
John Thornton, an experienced outdoorsman, who notices the dogs have been poorly treated and
are in a weakened condition. He warns the trio against crossing the river, but they ignore his
advice and order Buck to move on. Exhausted, starving, and sensing the danger ahead, Buck
refuses and continues to lie unmoving in the snow. After Buck is beaten by Hal, Thornton
recognizes him to be a remarkable dog. Disgusted by the driver's treatment of Buck, Thornton
hits Hal with the butt of his axe, cuts Buck free from his traces, and tells the trio he is keeping
him, much to Hal's displeasure. After some argument, the trio leaves and tries to cross the river,
but as Thornton warned, the ice breaks, and the three fall into the river and drown, along with
the sled and neglected dogs.

Buck comes to love and grow devoted to Thornton as he nurses him back to health. He
saves Thornton when the man falls into a river. After Thornton takes him on trips to pan for gold,
a bonanza king (someone who hit it rich in a certain area) wagers Thornton on the dog's strength
and devotion. Buck wins by breaking a half-ton sled free of the frozen ground, pulling it 100 yards
and winning US$1,600 in gold dust. A king of the Skookum Benches offers a large sum to buy
Buck, but Thornton has grown fond of him and declines.[3] While Thornton and his friends
continue their search for gold, Buck explores the wilderness and socializes with a timber wolf
from a local pack. One night, he returns from a log hunt to find that his beloved master and the
others in the camp have been killed by a group of Yeehat natives. Buck eventually kills the natives
to avenge Thornton, and he then is attacked by an entire pack of wolves. Buck wins the fight,
then finds that the same timber wolf he had socialized with is in the pack he fought. Buck then
follows the wolf and its pack into the forest, and answers the call of the wild. At the end of the
story, Buck returns each year as the Ghost Dog of the Northland Legend, to mourn at the site of
Thornton's death.

Submitted to:
Professor Ma. Cecilia Alimen