The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [145]
The story is really the record of the uncivilizing of Buck, the process by which the latent wild impulses of his nature, evoked by the life of hardship to which he was subjected, gradually gained the ascendancy, and finally called him back for good and all to the life of the forest and the leadership of a pack of wolves. It may be imagined that in the case of a St. Bernard weighing 140 pounds this revolution was not accomplished without signs of struggle along the course of progress, and the surmise is more than bourne out by a perusal of the book. If nothing else makes Mr. London’s book popular it ought to be rendered so by the complete way in which it will satisfy the love of dog fights apparently inherent in every man. Very nearly every dog’s paw was against Buck, and he won his way not only to eminence, but even to just plain ordinary permission to exist, by proving himself times out of number the best all-around dog in the train. It is the rule there that no civilized dog can stand up against the “huskies,” or native dogs, but Buck accomplished even that remarkable feat because he had intelligence enough to adapt himself to new conditions.
—July 25, 1903
ATLANTIC MONTHLY
The Call of the Wild is a story altogether untouched by bookishness. A bookish writer might, beginning with the title, have called it An Instance of Atavism, or A Reversion to Type. A bookish reader might conceivably read it as a sort of allegory with a broad human application ; but its face value as a single-minded study of animal nature really seems to be sufficiently considerable. The author, too, must be allowed to stand upon his own feet, though one understands why he should have been called the American Kipling. His work has dealt hitherto with primitive human nature; this is a study of primitive dog nature. No modern writer of fiction, unless it be Kipling, has preserved so clearly the distinction between animal virtue and human virtue. The farther Buck reverts from the artificial status of a man-bounded domestic creature to the natural condition of the “dominant primordial beast,” the more strongly (if unwillingly) we admire him. There is something magnificent in the spectacle of his gradual detachment from the tame, beaten-in virtues of uncounted forefathers, his increasing ability to hold his own among unwonted conditions, and his final triumph over the most dreaded powers of the wilderness: “He was a Killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being.... But for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed.... His cunning was wolf cunning and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorous animal, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility.... Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. He saw the movement, or heard the sound, and responded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant. His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy, and pour forth generously over the world.