Book Review: The Call of the Wild by Jack London - Part 1

At first I wasn’t sure I could write a review for this masterpiece, not because I didn’t want to (in fact, I was extremely keen on capturing my experience of reading this wonderful book so that I could re-live it whenever I wished), but because I didn’t know if I could write a review that would, in effectively capturing the nuances of the character of Buck, the protagonist, his feelings and experiences, his unparallel loyalty, his life lessons and his frightening ferocity, do justice to this marvel called The Call of the Wild.

But then I realized I couldn’t complete the journey I’d embarked on by turning the first page of the book without a proper and befitting farewell by way of a book review.

As evident from the title, The Call of the Wild is the gripping story of an animal, a dog named Buck, who lived a King’s life in Judge Miller’s house, a Californian ranch home. Greatly loved and adored, Buck enjoyed hunting with the Judge’s sons during the day as much as he loved curling up near the roaring library fire on cold evenings. His regal upbringing instilled a certain pride in Buck, his physical prowess matching the strength of his character. However, unknown to him, there was an evil world filled with sinister people beyond the comfortable premises of Judge Miller’s house.

It was in the fall of 1897 that the word of the Klondike Strike reached the United States. Rich deposits of gold had been found in the Klondike region in Canada’s Yukon Territory and thousands of hopefuls were pouring into the frozen North. The demand for sled dogs skyrocketed, and so did the prices people were willing to pay for them. An unsuspecting Buck was furtively led away by one of the gardener’s helpers and sold off to a greedier middleman.

Caged and humiliated, Buck was passed on from hand to hand, finally landing in the custody of a ruthless club-wielding man hellbent on teaching him a cruel lesson. Once freed from the shackles, Buck attempted again and again to tear apart the throat of the club-wielding man, but every time, he was stopped mid-air by a fierce blow that bloodied his beautiful coat. At last, beaten, but not broken, Buck learnt the Law of the Club, a lesson he remembered all his life – there is no chance of success against a man with a club.

Bought by two French Canadians, Buck begins his journey towards the frozen North. On his way, Buck witnesses snowfall for the first time in his life, the experience captured wonderfully by the following excerpt from the book:

“At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck’s feet sank into the white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. Most of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.”

Before long, to Buck’s chagrin, he learnt, or rather witnessed firsthand, the second lesson. Camping with Francois and Perrault, the two Frenchmen, and their other wild dogs, before Buck, a husky called Curly made friendly advances to another wolfish husky. To Curly’s horror, the husky did not take her advances kindly, and a fight ensued. At first, Buck could not comprehend the silent eagerness of the dogs surrounding the combatants, nor did he know why they licked their chops as they witnessed the wolfish husky tear apart Curly. No sooner had she tumbled off her feet, the onlooker huskies closed in on her, ruthlessly and greedily, and within minutes Curly was no more than shredded fleshy remains splattered over the white snow. As Buck watched an abominable dog Spitz walk away from the scene licking his bloodied chops, he learnt that in the wild, there was no fair play; there was only the rule of the fang. Once down, that was the end of you.

The journey to the North continued with Francois and Perrault driving the huskies in a formation that pulled the sled, with Spitz at the head of it. As Buck learnt the ways of the jungle by watching the wild beasts around him, he soon picked up a technique of stealing chunks of bacon, unnoticed by the Frenchmen. He soon came to realize that in the wild, under the law of the club and the fang, morality was a crippling handicap, one that would eventually lead a dog to a terrible death. Even as he underwent development (or retrogression) at a swift pace, relinquishing the civility from his days at Judge Miller’s house, there was no malice in his nature.
“He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the calmor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang.”

The moulding of his character was accompanied by a strengthening of his body. He could eat almost anything, however indigestible. His muscles hardened, and he became callous to ordinary pain. With senses keener than before, he became more sensitive to hostile advances in the wild. Years of domesticity at Judge Miller’s house faded into a forgotten past as Buck embraced his new lifestyle, his basic instinct that had been dormant until then – hunting his prey like an animal of the wild.

“They (his ancestors) quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at a star and howling down through the centuries and through him.”

Despite the increased hostility between Buck and Spitz, with Spitz deliberately picking up scuffles at every possible opportunity with his archrival, Buck was not inclined to rashness. He was too busy adjusting to his new life to engage in fights with the other huskies. Yet, one night as Buck grudgingly left his warm and snug nest to devour the thawed fish distributed by Francois, and returned later to find his nest occupied by no other than Spitz, it was too much for him. The beast in him roared. However, it wasn’t long before the fight began, that the camp was attacked by a pack of wild, starved huskies crazed by the smell of meat. The team dogs, including Buck and Spitz, joined the two Frenchmen in driving away the wild huskies, but not before half of their food ration was consumed and all of the nine team-dogs were wounded.

The depleted rations notwithstanding, the pack of the team-dogs, under the leadership of the Frenchmen, trudged on. Spitz capitalized on another opportunity of attacking Buck, when the latter was vulnerable, but was thwarted by Francois, who was watchful of the enmity between the two dogs. From that day, the war was on. Spitz, the acknowledged leader of the team and the lead-dog, felt his supremacy was challenged by Buck. On the other hand, Buck wanted the leadership role, simply because he was gripped by the pride of the trail – “that pride that holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness.” Also, unlike Spitz, Buck had not a trace of rashness left in him; he could bide his time and wait for the perfect opportunity to overthrow his opponent.

Buck craftily drove a covert mutiny within the team. He opposed the disciplining of erring dogs. He interfered in Spitz’s role as a team leader, often when Francois and Perrault weren’t around. His cunning schemes led to a breakdown of the hierarchical structure of power that Spitz had cautiously built over the years. The team was infected with disharmony, indiscipline and discord.

One night, under the white moonlight, as Buck led the pack of huskies chasing after a snowshoe rabbit, he experienced blood lust, the joy to kill. It was the moment he felt most alive. The following is my favourite passage from the book:

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which, life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the solider, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back to the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew and that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”

Soon after the rabbit’s life was snuffed out, Buck found himself face-to-face with Spitz. The moment had arrived. With the rest of the huskies gathering expectantly around the two combatants, certain stillness, borne out of respect and awe, settled over the onlookers. Spitz’s cunning and years of experience soon left Buck bleeding profusely with not a gash on his white fur. However, unknown to Spitz, Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness – imagination. Following his instincts, Buck pretended to attack using an old shoulder trick, and swept shrewdly at the last moment to cripple Spitz’s foreleg. Several times, the trick was repeated, leaving Spitz wounded and helpless. There was no hope for him. Buck felt no trickle of mercy; it was a virtue for gentler climes. As the huskies watched with bated breath, Buck moved in for the kill. He stood and looked on as the huskies tore Spitz to pieces. Buck, the dominant primordial beast, had arrived.