Call of the Wild review

This is a story about a dog named Buck who lives on a beautiful estate in California, but is sold off as a sled dog.

After being badly beaten by a dog trainer, Buck is used to pull mail in the Arctic. Although the work is tough, he learns quickly and soon takes over the sled team by killing the previous leader.

The dog team is sold off to different sled drivers and nearly worked to death. They are in need of rest, but because of mismanagement, the strength of the dogs gets drained out of them until they are killed off one by one. Fortunately, Buck is saved by a man named John Thornton, a kind man with a heart for animals.

John takes in Buck and helps him recover. Buck, having been mistreated by others in the past, is apprehensive at first, but then grows to love John. In fact, Buck pulls a 1,000 pound sled to win John a bet.

John takes Buck and the rest of his dogs into the back country, searching for a mythical Lost Cabin. During this search, Buck wanders into the forest by himself and meets a wild wolf, which sparks a primal instinct within him.

One night, after returning from the forest, Buck sees that John has been killed by a group of local Indians.

In the end, with nowhere else to go, Buck integrates into the local wolf pack, becoming a part of local Indian mythology.

First, this story discusses the relationship between domestic and primal instincts. Buck is introduced as a soft dog, living a luxurious life on the grounds of a mansion. But when he is taken and placed in the wild with other dogs, something within him changes. Yet, these changes are not foreign to him. It's like these instincts are already a part of him, just unearthed.

And what makes this more relatable to readers, who do not necessary experience that call of the wild in our highly modernized society, is how these primal instincts may have more to do with morality than grunts and cavemen drawings.

The story suggests that often to survive, moral nature must die. As Buck tries to assimilate to his new outdoor lifestyle, he is timid and almost polite, to the point where the other dogs eat his food. However, he soon learns to steal food to survive. In fact, he learns that it is easier to steal than not to steal.

But why would readers enjoy a story about non-talking dogs? It's because of the applicability of the story to humans through the style of writing. As written, readers are placed in the head of dog, trying to understand the sled dog culture.

And as the story goes on, readers discover how humanized Buck's personality is. Buck is relatable as a character. Any person who has worked in a job that they did not necessarily want can understand the struggles Buck goes through in this story. It's a frustration derived by helplessness, anger, and fear, all human emotions, yet felt by a dog and projected to a level of relatability.

Through Minute Book Reports, hopefully you can get the plot and a few relevant discussion points in just a couple of minutes.

FULL AudioBook

Quotes

• "An eye for an eye - and the whole world go blind soon."
• "Better I brightest meteor than eternal, but the sleepy planet ..."
• "Life always gives a person less than he demands from her."
• "One should not see itself in its true form, then life becomes unbearable."
• "Let me see the truth in the face. Tell me, what face the truth. "
• "WOMAN - is a failed man."
• "To invent the mortal sins, he needed someone with his imagination and his power over matter."
• "Everything is perfectly fine as long as you do not possess them."
• "A person should not be selfish, but he will remain so when the social system based on the undisguised disgusting"
• "Bone, abandoned dogs, not a charity; charity - is bone, divided by the dog when you are hungry is not less than it. "
• "Beauty - absolute. Human life, whole life submits beauty. Beauty has already existed in the universe to man. Beauty remains in the universe, when a man dies, but not vice versa. Beauty does not depend on a tiny man floundering in the mud. "
• "For me there is something attractive in a drunken man, and if I was at the head of any educational institution, I would certainly have established a chair studying psychology drunks, with optional practical training. This would give more than any books and the laboratory. "
• The fact is, to be truthful, to copy the fiction. "
• "I just get shy when I see his human limitations, which prevents me to cover all aspects of the problem, especially when it comes to fundamental issues of life."
• "Whether it happens that two silent soul, so different, so come to each other? Of course, we often feel the same way, but even when we feel something different, we still understand each other, even though we have a common language. We do not need the words spoken aloud. We are for this are unintelligible. "

Interesting facts from the life of Jack London

• At the end of 1875 a scandal erupted in the United States: the American press excitedly telling us about the unfortunate Flora Wellman, who tried to shoot himself in a fit of despair after a famous astrologer, Professor William Cheney, with whom she lived, learning about the pregnancy Flora insisted on an abortion. All, however, ended up rather well: the name of Cheney was dishonored for life, and Wellman received only slightly injured, and January 12, 1876 gave birth to San Francisco boy, who gave the name John. John Griffith Chaney, also known as Jack London.

• Two women in the childhood Jack London became important for him to end his days. First - Virginia Prentiss, a former slave Flora Wellmann; in her care after the birth mother left him for a while. Second - Eliza London, the eldest daughter of Jack's stepfather John London, whom Flora was married at the end of 1876; loyal friend and guardian angel of the writer. Alas, she constantly bore Flora get rich quick plans and these adventures smashed all attempts to farm her husband during the severe economic crisis.

• Working life of Jack London began early: Seller morning and evening newspapers, the boy in a bowling alley, a cleaner in the park, working the canning factory. Then began the maritime adventure. Good boy Virginia lent $ 300, which was bought second-hand schooner, and soon 14-year-old "captain" called "Prince of the oyster pirates" for illegal fishing of shrimp and crabs in San Francisco's waterfront. Then there was the service in the fishing patrol and swimming sailor on a fishing schooner "Sophie Sutherland" in Japan and the Bering Sea.
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Jack London's books

Jack London's life in pictures

Childhood

Middle ages

Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in The Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.

Eden represents writers' frustration with publishers by speculating that when he mails off a manuscript, a "cunning arrangement of cogs" immediately puts it in a new envelope and returns it automatically with a rejection slip. [Citation needed] The central theme of Eden's developing artistic sensibilities places the novel in the tradition of the Künstlerroman, in which is narrated the formation and development of an artist.

Eden differs from London in that Eden rejects socialism, attacking it as "slave morality", and relies on a Nietzschean individualism. In a note to Upton Sinclair, London wrote, "One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled, for not a single reviewer has discovered it.

• Plot summary

Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class batskґround and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible unless and until he reached their level of wealth and refinement.

Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down ... and attempted to make something of yourself ". By the time Eden attains the favour of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has already developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreats into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the genteelness of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family. He felt that people did not value him for himself or for his work but only for his fame.

The novel ends with Eden's committing suicide by drowning, which contributed to what researcher Clarice Stasz calls the "biographical myth" that Jack London's own death was a suicide.


London's oldest daughter Joan commented that in spite of its tragic ending, the book is often regarded as "a 'success' story ... which inspired not only a whole generation of young writers but other different fields who, without aid or encouragement, attained their objectives through great struggle ".

Popular works

1. A Daughter of the Snows (1902)
2. The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)
3. The Call of the Wild (1903)
4. The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903)
5. The Sea-Wolf (1904)
6. The Game (1905)
7. White Fang (1906)
8. Before Adam (1907)
9. The Iron Heel (1908)
10. Martin Eden (1909)
11. Burning Daylight (1910)
12. Adventure (1911)
13. The Scarlet Plague (1912)
14. The Abysmal Brute (1913)
15. The Valley of the Moon (1913)
16. The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914)
17. The Star Rover (1915)
18. The Little Lady of the Big House (1916)
19. Jerry of the Islands (1917)
20. Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)
21. Hearts of Three (1920)

Translations into Russian

• Collected works

1. Jack London. Collected works in 7 volumes + additional volume. - M .: State Publishing fiction, 1954-1957.
2. Jack London. Collected works in 14 volumes. - M .: "The Truth", 1961. - ( "Spark" Library).
3. Jack London. Collected works in 13 volumes. - M .: "The Truth", 1976. - ( "Spark" Library).
4. Jack London. Collected Works in 8 volumes. - M .: "Fatherland", "Poligran", 1993-1995.
5. Jack London. Collected works in 16 volumes. - Kharkov: "Folio", 1994.
6. Jack London. Collected works in 20 volumes. - M .: "Terra", 1998-1999.
7. Jack London. Collected works in 13 volumes. - Kharkov-Belgorod "Book Club", 2009. screen version

• Full list adaptations

Films based on works by the London set repeatedly. There are more than one hundred and adaptations of works by Jack London. The writer himself once played a cameo in the first film adaptation of a sailor in his novel "The Sea Wolf" (1913).

The Sea Wolf

 (into 3 parts)

1. For the love of gold (1908), 9 min., USA
2. According to the law (1926), the USSR
3. Call of the Wild (1935), 95 min., USA
4. Sea Wolf (1941), 100 min., USA
5. White Fang (1946), the USSR
6. The Mexican (1955), the USSR
7. Call of the Wild (1972), 100 min., Great Britain, France, Germany (West Germany), Italy, Spain
8. Emperor of the North (1973), 120 min., USA
9. White Fang (1973), 102 min., France, Italy, Spain
10. Burning Daylight (1975), the USSR
11. Smoke and Kid (1975), the USSR
12. Martin Eden (1976), the USSR
13. Let him speak ... (1982), the USSR
14. Theft (1982), the USSR
15. Sea Wolf (1990), the USSR
16. White Fang (1991), 107 min., USA
17. Three Hearts (1992), Russia, Ukraine
18. Sea Wolf (1993), 90 min., USA
19. Alaska Kid (TV series) (1993), Russia, Germany, Poland
20. White Fang 2: Legend of the White Wolf (1994), United States
21. Iron Will (1994), 109 min., USA
22. Call of the Wild (1997), 91 min., Canada
23. The Iron Heel of Oligarchy (1997), Russia
24. Call of the Wild (2009), 87 min., USA
25. Sea Wolf (2009), 180 min., Canada, Germany
26. Time is running out (2010), 102 min., Canada

Works

• Short stories

London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed.[citation needed] "To Build a Fire" is the best known of all his stories. Set in the harsh Klondike, it recounts the haphazard trek of a new arrival who has ignored an old-timer's warning about the risks of traveling alone. Falling through the ice into a creek in seventy-five-below weather, the unnamed man is keenly aware that survival depends on his untested skills at quickly building a fire to dry his clothes and warm his extremities. After publishing a tame version of this story—with a sunny outcome—in The Youth's Companion in 1902, London offered a second, more severe take on the man's predicament in The Century Magazine in 1908.

Short stories

1. "An Old Soldier's Story" (1894)
2. "Who Believes in Ghosts!" (1895)
3. "And 'FRISCO Kid Came Back" (1895)
4. "Night's Swim In Yeddo Bay" (1895)
5. "One More Unfortunate" (1895)
6. "Sakaicho, Hona Asi And Hakadaki" (1895)
7. "A Klondike Christmas" (1897)
8. "Mahatma's Little Joke" (1897)
9. "O Haru" (1897)
10. "Plague Ship" (1897)
11. "The Strange Experience Of A Misogynist" (1897)
12. "Two Gold Bricks" (1897)
13. "The Devil's Dice Box" (1898)
14. "A Dream Image" (1898)
15. "The Test: A Clondyke Wooing" (1898)
16. "To the Man on Trail" (1898)
17. "In a Far Country" (1899)
18. "The King of Mazy May" (1899)
19. "The End Of The Chapter" (1899)
20. "The Grilling Of Loren Ellery" (1899)
21. "The Handsome Cabin Boy" (1899)
22. "In The Time Of Prince Charley" (1899)
23. "Old Baldy" (1899)
24. "The Men of Forty Mile" (1899)
25. "Pluck And Pertinacity" (1899)
26. "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone" (1899)
27. "The White Silence" (1899)
28. "A Thousand Deaths" (1899)
29. "Wisdom of the Trail" (1899)
30. "An Odyssey of the North" (1900)
31. "The Son of the Wolf" (1900)
32. "Even unto Death" (1900)
33. "The Man with the Gash" (1900)
34. "A Lesson In Heraldry" (1900)
35. "A Northland Miracle" (1900)
36. "Proper "GIRLIE"" (1900)
37. "Thanksgiving On Slav Creek" (1900)
38. "Their Alcove" (1900)
39. "Housekeeping In The Klondike" (1900)
40. "Dutch Courage" (1900)
41. "Where the Trail Forks" (1900)
42. "Hyperborean Brew" (1901)
43. "A Relic of the Pliocene" (1901)
44. "The Lost Poacher" (1901)
45. "The God of His Fathers" (1901)
46. ""FRISCO Kid's" Story" (1901)
47. "The Law of Life" (1901)
48. "The Minions of Midas" (1901)
49. "In the Forests of the North" (1902)
50. "The "Fuzziness" of Hoockla-Heen" (1902)
51. "The Story of Keesh" (1902)
52. "Keesh, Son of Keesh" (1902)
53. "Nam-Bok, the Unveracious" (1902)
54. "Li Wan the Fair" (1902)
55. "Lost Face"
56. "Master of Mystery" (1902)
57. "The Sunlanders" (1902)
58. "The Death of Ligoun" (1902)
59. "Moon-Face" (1902)
60. "Diable—A Dog" (1902), renamed Bâtard in 1904
61. "To Build a Fire" (1902, revised 1908)
62. "The League of the Old Men" (1902)
63. "The Dominant Primordial Beast" (1903)
64. "The One Thousand Dozen" (1903)
65. "The Marriage of Lit-lit" (1903)
66. "The Shadow and the Flash" (1903)
67. "The Leopard Man's Story" (1903)
68. "Negore the Coward" (1904)
69. "All Gold Cañon" (1905)
70. "Love of Life" (1905)
71. "The Sun-Dog Trail" (1905)
72. "The Apostate" (1906)
73. "Up The Slide" (1906)
74. "Planchette" (1906)
75. "Brown Wolf" (1906)
76. "Make Westing" (1907)
77. "Chased By The Trail" (1907)
78. "Trust" (1908)
79. "A Curious Fragment" (1908)
80. "Aloha Oe" (1908)
81. "That Spot" (1908)
82. "The Enemy of All the World" (1908)
83. "The House of Mapuhi" (1909)
84. "Good-by, Jack" (1909)
85. "Samuel" (1909)
86. "South of the Slot" (1909)
87. "The Chinago" (1909)
88. "The Dream of Debs" (1909)
89. "The Madness of John Harned" (1909)
90. "The Seed of McCoy" (1909)
91. "A Piece of Steak" (1909)
92. "Mauki" (1909)
93. "Goliath" (1910)
94. "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910)
95. "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1910)
96. "When the World was Young" (1910)
97. "The Terrible Solomons" (1910)
98. "The Inevitable White Man" (1910)
99. "The Heathen" (1910)
100. "Yah! Yah! Yah!" (1910)
101. "By the Turtles of Tasman" (1911)
102. "The Mexican" (1911)
103. "War" (1911)
104. "The Unmasking Of The Cad" (1911)
105. "The Scarlet Plague" (1912)
106. "The Captain Of The Susan Drew" (1912)
107. "The Sea-Farmer" (1912)
108. "The Feathers of the Sun" (1912)
109. "The Prodigal Father" (1912)
110. "Samuel" (1913)
111. "The Sea-Gangsters" (1913)
112. "The Strength of the Strong" (1914)
113. "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1914)
114. "The Hussy" (1916)
115. "Like Argus of the Ancient Times" (1917)
116. "Jerry of the Islands" (1917)
117. "The Red One" (1918)
118. "Shin-Bones" (1918)
119. "The Bones of Kahekili" (1919)

• Novels

London's most famous novels are The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, The Iron Heel, and Martin Eden.

In a letter dated Dec 27, 1901, London's Macmillan publisher George Platt Brett, Sr. said "he believed Jack's fiction represented 'the very best kind of work' done in America."

Critic Maxwell Geismar called The Call of the Wild "a beautiful prose poem"; editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden and Huckleberry Finn"; and novelist E.L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable ... his masterpiece.

Novels

1. The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)
2. A Daughter of the Snows (1902)
3. The Call of the Wild (1903)
4. The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903) (published anonymously, co-authored with Anna Strunsky)
5. The Sea-Wolf (1904)
6. The Game (1905)
7. White Fang (1906)
8. Before Adam (1907)
9. The Iron Heel (1908)
10. Martin Eden (1909)
11. Burning Daylight (1910)
12. Adventure (1911)
13. The Scarlet Plague (1912)
14. A Son of the Sun (1912)
15. The Abysmal Brute (1913)
16. The Valley of the Moon (1913)
17. The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914)
18. The Star Rover (1915) (published in England as The Jacket)
19. The Little Lady of the Big House (1916)
20. Jerry of the Islands (1917)
21. Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)
22. Hearts of Three (1920) (novelization of a script by Charles Goddard)
23. The Assassination Bureau, Ltd (1963) (left half-finished, completed by Robert L. Fish)

Short story collections

1. Son of the Wolf (1900)
2. Chris Farrington, Able Seaman (1901)
3. The God of His Fathers & Other Stories (1901)
4. Children of the Frost (1902)
5. The Faith of Men and Other Stories (1904)
6. Tales of the Fish Patrol (1906)
7. Moon-Face and Other Stories (1906)
8. Love of Life and Other Stories (1907)
9. Lost Face (1910)
10. South Sea Tales (1911)
11. When God Laughs and Other Stories (1911)
12. The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii (1912)
13. A Son of the Sun (1912)
14. The Night Born (1913)
15. The Strength of the Strong (1914)
16. The Turtles of Tasman (1916)
17. The Human Drift (1917)
18. The Red One (1918)
19. On the Makaloa Mat (1919)
20. Dutch Courage and Other Stories (1922)

Autobiographical memoirs

1. The Road (1907)
2. The Cruise of the Snark (1911)
3. Smoke Bellew (1912)
4. John Barleycorn (1913)

Non-fiction and essays

1. Through The Rapids On The Way To The Klondike (1899)
2. From Dawson To The Sea (1899)
3. What Communities Lose By The Competitive System (1900)
4. The Impossibility Of War (1900)
5. Phenomena Of Literary Evolution (1900)
6. A Letter To Houghton Mifflin Co. (1900)
7. Husky, Wolf Dog Of The North (1900)
8. Editorial Crimes – A Protest (1901)
9. Again The Literary Aspirant (1902)
10. The People of the Abyss (1903)
11. How I Became a Socialist (1903)
12. The War of the Classes (1905)
13. The Story Of An Eyewitness (1906)
14. A Letter To Woman's Home Companion (1906)
15. Revolution, and other Essays (1910)
16. Mexico's Army And Ours (1914)
17. Lawgivers (1914)
18. Our Adventures In Tampico (1914)
19. Stalking The Pestilence (1914)
20. The Red Game Of War (1914)
21. The Trouble Makers Of Mexico (1914)
22. With Funston’s Men (1914)

Biography

John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.

Flora Wellman

• Family

Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Eleanor Garrett Jones.

Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe London's father was astrologer William Chaney.

Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown.

•   Early life

London at the age of nine
with his dog Rollo, 1885

London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery.

In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo, New York. In The Road, he wrote:

Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them.

 After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School. 

• Golden Rush

Miners and prospectors ascend the Chilkoot
Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush

On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sister's husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories.  London's time in the harsh Klondike, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy.

London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism. 

• First marriage

London married Elizabeth "Bessie" Maddern on April 7, 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published. Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. She was related to stage actresses Minnie Maddern Fiske and Emily Stevens.

Bessie Maddern London and
daughters, Joan and Becky

Bessie Maddern London and daughters, Joan and Becky
London's pet name for Bess was "Mother-Girl" and Bess's for London was "Daddy-Boy".Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901 and their second, Bessie (later called Becky), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California. Here London wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild.
London reportedly complained to friends Joseph Noel and George Sterling:

[Bessie] is devoted to purity. When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me. She'd sell me and the children out for her damned purity. It's terrible. Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it.

On July 24, 1903, London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904, London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.

Jack and Charmian London

 (c. 1915) at Waikiki

• Second marriage

After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. London was introduced to Kittredge by his MacMillan publisher, George Platt Brett, Sr., while Kittredge served as Brett's secretary.Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match." Their time together included numerous trips, including a 1907 cruise on the yacht Snark to Hawaii and Australia. Many of London's stories are based on his visits to Hawaii, the last one for 10 months beginning in December 1915.

The couple also visited Goldfield, Nevada, in 1907, where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords.

• Death

London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike.Additionally, during travels on the Snark, he and Charmian picked up unspecified tropical infections, and diseases, including Yaws.