The Way Back to Nature

Ⅰ.Abstract:

The Call of the Wild (1903) is a world famous animal story. Set in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. It’s about Buck, a dog’s magnificent cross-bred offspring of a St Bernard and a Scottish Collie. Stolen from his comfortable life on a Californian estate and shipped to the Klondike to work as a sledge dog, he triumphs over his circumstance and becomes the leader of a wolf pack. The story records the ‘de-civilization’ of Buck as he answers “the call of the wild”, an inherent memory of primeval origins to which he instinctively responds during his long trail and trace.

Ⅱ.Key words

Deterministic ideas of naturalism, survival, de-cilization or primitiveness

Ⅲ.Brief introduction of the writing background and the author

ⅰ.about the writing background

  The American literature which is just over 200 years old is one of the youngest literatures, but it holds an enormous effect on the world literature. And it’s best known for its complexity of literary schools. Among them realism (1865-1914) had originated in France, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life, while naturalism, a new and harsher realism, is the peak of American realism. Naturalism in America had been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals as well as Darwinism; therefore realists hold a pessimistic world-view. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of Jack London.

   What deserve a further explanation are the influential factors contributing London’s lively writing. Above all, it’s Charles Darwin’s theory in The Origin of Species (1859) which drags many writers moving far away from religious ideas. Darwinism seemed to stress the animality of man, to suggest that he was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. Secondly, Kipling’s The Fungle Book is an important exemplar for London in blending the fable with the parable and which exemplifies the “worldliness of the beast fable and the more programmatic moralism of the parable…in clear allegories containing both animal and human characters.” Thirdly, London’s Klondike year in a rush for gold also nurtures his visual imagination in the descriptive power he brings to the settings of his stories including The Call of the Wild, White Fang. Moreover, own much to the poverty of his early years and his desperate struggle for economic survival, London successfully presents the thematic idea, namely survival, in The Call of the Wild.

ⅱ.about the author

Jack London (1876-1916) grew up in extreme poverty and experienced profoundly the struggle for survival. His works deeply felt commitment to the fundamental reality of the law of survival and the will to power is dramatized in his most popular novels, The Call of the Wild《野性的呼唤》and The Sea Wolf《海狼》. As to his writing style, London had written too much too fast, with too little concern for the stylistic and formal refinement and subtlety of characterization. He frankly acknowledged that he wrote only for money. He had not, moreover, reconciled his contradictory views of man’s nature and destiny. But London’s stories of man in and against nature contribute to be popular all over the world.

    Through The Call of the Wild as well as in its companion piece White Fang, it is easy to perceive the significant contributions London made in the American literature. He developed a style for voicing the consciousness of animals, a style that renders the immediacy of sensory experience as it determines action in the animal world. The animal life is characterized by their response to the stimulus of sight, sound, touch, hearing and smell, and this is shown in London’s grasp of the concrete descriptions of animal behavior. What he also offers is a more contentious representation of the inner life of animals, where issues such as trust, fidelity, supremacy, love and other affective emotions are brought into play. London once disregarded the criticism from those commented on his use of dogs as primary protagonists: I am making fresh, vivid, new stuff, and dog psychology that warm the hearts of dog lovers and the heads of psychologists, who usually are sever critics on dog psychology. I think you will like these two books and there may be a chance for them to make a good impression on the reading public.

Ⅳ. Plot

Buck should have been a happy domesticated dog, quite content with his life in the southern part of America, the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley with Judge Miller’s families. However his fate is forever changed and he sets out for a tragic journey as a sledge dog after being stolen, shipped away from the tranquil California to the turbulent northern region. The first station is the Dyea beach where he has saw “dogs fighting as those wolfish creatures fought.” What he is lessoned firstly by the “red-sweater man” the law of club and fang which curses him to obey strictly to the human world. There he meets his initial pack of companions, Spitz, Francois, Dave, Perrault, Bille, Joe and Sol-leks (the dominant dog). They share little similarity with Buck who is “civilized”. They’re aggressive, care about nothing but survival. Buck is isolated at first. He is lessoned again to keep away from them. During their harsh toil, “the first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment.” “His development (or retrogression) was rapid.” Buck quickly makes himself adapt to live as a blood-thirsty wild beast. The call of the wild from now on constantly occurs in his life. His inherent, latent wildness drives him into a position of primordial supremacy over all other dogs. Physical vigorous, psychological independent, Buck turns out to be a more competent in place of Sol-lerks, and he organizes the team into a well-order. Before long Buck takes the leadership, all the team dogs are resold to head farther toward the northland. It’s a tough way since they trudges through season after season. All of them are nearly driven to die for the harsh nature and a desperate want of sufficient food, warmth, rest. The toil ends with the only survival of Buck— John Thornton saves him. More sincere love than gratitude, Buck willingly leads a harmonious life with his master. Moreover, he saves John from the death two times. But Buck regards himself part of the wild, and he must answer his ancestors’ call. He leaves John for the forest, finds a wolf the creature he longs to be all the time. He comes back only witnessing John’s death. The last tie that binds Buck and human is broken. Buck determinedly turns to the primitive wild. Finally he is successfully transformed to become the leader of a pack of wolves.

 

Ⅴ. Character Analysis

In The Call of the Wild, London’s characters tend to fall very simply into the categories of the good or the bad, an allegorical mode of representation inherent to the parable, which was greatly influenced by Kipling and was similar to the ancient Greek writer Aesop whose stories use animal characters to illustrate moral lessons, so that for example foxes are cunning, hawks predatory, and sheep silly. In this sense the fable tells us what we already know, and affirms ancient wisdom and the fable works by the exhibition of these characteristics in animals as lessons in human behavior, which is also the intention London applies the dog as his primary protagonist. This is most evident in chapter five in the sharp contrast between John Thornton and Hal, Charles and Mercedes. Hal and Charles are embodiment of folly whose ignorance of the real dangers of their work leads to their deaths, whilst Mercedes is a portrait of feminine selfishness and sensationalism. In contrast Thornton exemplifies the virtues of patience and love.   

 

Buck’s Fellow Team Memebers

The readers can have an overall view of some Buck’s fellow dogs’ differentiated human characteristics from an episode in the book when Buck triumphed over his primary antagonist Spitzer to win the mastership, the team members are required to give Buck a judgment. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership. It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they did not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, has grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great now that Buck proceed to lick them into shape. Pike, who pulled at Buck’s heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing…the first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly-a thing that Spitz had never succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for mercy (Chapter IV, P29). One the one hand, this episode gives vivid comprehensions of those dogs’ human-like psychology. On the other hand it showcases indirectly but strikingly Buck’s dominant stance in comparison with the earlier days.

Buck-the primary protagonist

Dog is a highly valued image by the westerners as a representation of being loyal, a risk-taker, a frontier who never ceases to win the mastership over the nature and survive the harsh reality. Therefore, it embodies partly their individualism whose subject is a retreat from the confines of the civic life so as to realize the full potential of personal talents.

Buck is beyond any doubt the best representation of Jack London’s Darwinist principles of “evolution” and “Natural Selection”. His condition in the story moves from subordination to dominance, his position in the sled team changes from a follower to the leader, his relationship with men varies between mutual dependence and obedience under the law of clubs and fang. Buck possesses double identities; on the one hand he is a de-civilised animal, on the other hand he reveals a universal theme that’s shared even by human, namely a strong desire to survive any harsh environment. Such a connection shows itself according to London like this which is also the way Buck trudged to answer the call of the wild: Under Perrault and Francois’ control, Buck felt an intimation of a hereditary past and he was evoked a remarkable vision of a primitive man, the hairy crouching ancestor of the human whose animal-like agility and alertness suggest “one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.” This is Buck’s as well as London’s powerful vision of human and animal origins, one that is a recurrence to Buck, and “when he has little work to do he wanders with the hairy man in that other world.”(p57) Buck was seized by this irresistible but mysterious call of his ancestors；to him“it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing and indefinite wandering through places.”(p56) “He loved to run down dry water courses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods…But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the forest, reading signs and sounds.” At last, he answered the call when he joined a wolf’s company. He ran by the side of his wood brother-the wolf-toward the forest. He could no longer stay with his master Thornton, because now he was a killer, blood-longing, preyed on things that lived, unaided, alone. He was absolutely capable to “survive triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived”, which was manifested by his avenge to Indians who killed Thornton. Confronting the forever lost tie with the human society, Buck was totally merged into the primitive forest where he became the unchallenged leader of a pack of wolves, breeding with their dams, passing his pure wildness to later generations and transformed in the tale of the Yeehats into the Ghost Dog, of whom they are afraid and whose women speak of him as the Evil Spirit. The irresistible natural force now was fully instilled into Buck’s soul. He was never afraid of the wildness.

Apart from Buck’s toughness, independence and passion, I’m also deeply affected by his humanistic personality, loyalty and wisdom. It’s easy to find significant movies about the dog as more than a brutal animal. In the Eight Below, Max, the hero saved the whole sled-team in the extreme environment after the chief dog Maya was wounded. In Hachiko: A Dog's Story, Hachiko awaited for the return of his master in the train station without knowing his master was unable to come back again. It is always their human-like characteristics that convince me all the time animals are no enemy of human beings, instead they deserves our respect and tender. There was not a happy ending in the novel The Call of the Wild. John Thornton and his colleagues were killed by savages. Buck, after killing them, returned to the forest where he thought himself belong to.

Personally, I myself am a pro-transcendentalism that views the world and the nature in a romantic point. Any living creature is part of the nature and they are never alienated from each other. Therefore, although in terms of Darwinist determinism, The Call of the Wild is somewhat the author’s pessimistic and tragic life-attitude, what strikes me most is the interconnectedness between living creatures, man included, and the wild.

 

Ⅵ.Comment

Buck, the protagonist in the Call of the Wild is an animal, however he fully reveals the major themes Jack London makes his every effort to crackle: survival and deterministic ideas. The most enduring popularity of the story lies in Buck’s primitive struggle in the context of irresistible forces.

London believed in Darwinism which seemed to stress the animality of man, to suggest that he was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. Therefore, the protagonist is no other than a dog and since the moment Buck was away from “the sun-kissed Sarita Clara Valley” and Judge Miller’s family, he was thrown into a primitive world where he was deeply seized by the overwhelming will of survival that “He must master or be mastered: while to show mercy was a weakness.” (Chapter VI, page 47), particularly after he was taught the lesson, namely “the law of club and fang” for the fist time since he was born by “the red sweater man”. For being never tortured by the shortage of food, caring and security, Buck was placed as the author’s intention in a tough journey to “grow up”. According to the author the hero survives by strengthen and courage, so what fatally contribute to Buck’s final triumph over a pack of wolves are his physical strength and psychological independence. As a domesticated dog, Buck was innocent of turmoil of the world outside his cozy birthplace. Buck’s ignorance and shallow content are depicted in the book like this: He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire……. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously……, for he was the king, -king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included. However, it’s the extreme desire to survive during the long trace and trail as a sledge dog after his absolute departure from any physical or spiritual protection that polished him to become a real wile beast that kings over all creatures, and even killed “man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.” Abraham Maslow, a famous psychologist stated that human needs vary from the lower level to  higher level；he posited a hierarchy of them based on two groupings: deficiency needs（匮乏动机） and growth needs（成长动机）which belong to the lower level and higher level respectively. With the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level. The first four levels are: 1. physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc.2. Safety/security: out of danger.3.Belongingness and love.4. Esteem: to achieve approval and recognition. According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met. This theory can be well justified by Buck’s struggle for survival which is motivated in his long trail featured by the need for food, water, sheltering, supremacy, loyalty and love toward his last human master—John.

Another thematic point London focused on is his natural flowing in the book of a pessimistic and deterministic outlook on the internal and external world, which is a distinct characteristic of naturalism in his time. According to London, the external world, namely the nature is indifferent and dwarfs the sufferings of individuals. Life is hard; fate is not in our hand; humans have no control over it; suffering is unavoidable in one’s life. Therefore, beyond any doubt Buck is destined to be called back to the wild because of its irresistible forces. As a dog, Buck was convinced that he had inherited the nature of primitiveness from his ancestors, thus his fate has been determined. He had to be de-civilized. In the book, Buck’s hearing “the call of the wild” is a frequent recurring that confused but compelled Buck so much that he often felt himself appealed to go into the forest. Buck answered the call in the last chapter when he “lost his only tie with human” as his likely compromising with the civilized society perished forever along with the death of John. At the end of the story, London depicted Buck “musing for a time, howling once, long and mournfully” every year in the place where John was killed, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s an vigorous play where Buck on the one hand commemorated his bonds with the society, on the other hand sang for his primordial life.