Five-minute digest
The Call of the Wild
Summary
The Call of the Wild follows Buck, a huge St. Bernard and Scotch shepherd cross, through one terrible and transforming year of the Klondike gold rush. Buck lives as the lord of Judge Miller's estate in the Santa Clara Valley of California until Manuel, a gardener's helper who needs money for his lottery gambling, sells him to dog traders. Shipped north in a crate, starved and enraged, Buck is beaten into submission by a man in a red sweater and learns his first lesson: a man with a club must be obeyed. On the beach at Dyea he watches the gentle Newfoundland Curly torn to pieces by a pack of huskies, and learns that a dog who goes down does not get up. Bought by the French-Canadian government couriers François and Perrault, he is harnessed into a dog team, taught by the veteran wheel dogs Dave and Sol-leks, and quickly learns to steal food, sleep in a hole in the snow, and break ice from his toes. His growing pride brings him into a long feud with Spitz, the cruel and experienced lead dog. After a night chase of a snowshoe rabbit, Buck kills Spitz in a fight to the death while the team waits in a ring, and he forces the drivers to make him leader; under him the team makes record time. Sold to a Scottish half-breed's mail outfit, the dogs haul heavy loads until they are worn out. The faithful Dave, sick with some inner injury, begs to die in harness and is finally shot. The broken team is then sold to three greenhorns from the States: Hal, his sister Mercedes, and her husband Charles. Overloaded, quarrelling and ignorant, they overfeed and then starve the dogs, beat them, and press on across rotten spring ice. At John Thornton's camp at the mouth of the White River Buck refuses to rise under Hal's club; Thornton cuts him free, and minutes later the sled and its three owners break through the ice and vanish. Under Thornton's care Buck learns love for the first time. He saves Thornton from the man Burton and from rapids on the Forty-Mile, and wins Thornton a $1,600 wager by starting a sled loaded with a thousand pounds of flour. On a journey east in search of a fabled Lost Cabin, the partners find gold, and Buck, drawn more and more by a call from the forest, runs with a timber wolf and hunts alone for days. He returns to find Thornton and his partners killed by Yeehat raiders, kills several of the attackers, and answers the call at last, leading a wolf pack and passing into Yeehat legend as the Ghost Dog. London wrote the book in late 1902 and early 1903; it was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903 and published in book form by Macmillan that July.
Top Lessons
Adapt or perish
Buck survives because he learns quickly: how to sleep under snow, how to break ice from his feet, how to obey the club without fawning. London shows endurance as intelligent adjustment, not mere toughness, and contrasts Buck with Curly, who did not know the rules, and with Hal, Charles and Mercedes, who would not learn them.
Masters good and bad
The book is a study of masters: the kindly Judge, the brutal dog breaker, the just couriers, the careless greenhorns, and Thornton, who treats his dogs as if they were his children. The dogs' work and lives depend on the character of the person holding the reins.
Love that answers love
Buck's devotion to Thornton is the one thing strong enough to hold him back from the wild. He risks his life in the rapids and against Burton, and Thornton refuses a fortune for him at the Eldorado Saloon.
Pride in work
Dave and Sol-leks change completely in harness, and Dave would rather die pulling than be cut out of the team. London shows the dignity of work done well even under hardship.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.”
“He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken.”
“a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.”
Frequently cited
“They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.”
“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.”
“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”
Frequently cited
“his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.”
Medical Lens
The medical content concerns animals and the hardships of the trail rather than human medicine, but several episodes are vivid. Dave's case in Chapter IV reads like a frontier consultation: the drivers press and prod him by the fire, find no broken bones, and conclude that something is wrong inside; they then judge it kinder to let him die in the traces, a small debate about mercy and the will to work. Chapter V is a study of starvation, as the greenhorns overfeed and then ration the dogs until they are skin and bone, feed them frozen horse-hide, and beat them when they fall. Dolly's sudden madness in Chapter III is described in terms that suggest rabies, though London does not name it. John Thornton's frozen feet, Buck's three broken ribs after the rapids, and London's own scurvy in the Klondike give the period's frontier context of cold injury and malnutrition. Any reading of the dogs' states in modern veterinary terms is interpretive.
- Chapter III
Dolly goes suddenly mad on the trail, chases Buck in a frenzy, and is killed by François with an axe.
- Chapter IV
Dave's inward injury: the drivers examine him at the fire, cannot locate the trouble, and let him return to harness before he is shot.
- Chapter V
Hal and Charles halve the dogs' rations, then feed them frozen horse-hide; the dogs die one by one of exhaustion and hunger.
- Chapter VI
Thornton, still limping from frozen feet, nurses Buck back to health; later Buck is found to have three broken ribs after the Forty-Mile rapids.