Call of the Wild

Jack London wrote the Call of the Wild when he was 27 years old. The book was published in 1903, over 100 years ago!

I didn’t think I was going to like this book. For some reason, I read this when I was in High School, or watched the Disney movie like it, The Journey of Natty Gann, which I remember vaguely being about the love between a young girl and a wolf. Something like that.

This book was nothing about Natty Gann. It was a much deeper book than I thought it was going to be, and it’s one of my favorites, next to Robinson Crusoe. Both books are about a return to a long-forgotten world. 

The Setting

The setting takes place during the Yukon Gold Rush in the late 1800s. And the whole book takes place from the perspective of a dog, Buck. Buck was in California, then he was kidnapped and he was taken to the Yukon, a very cold land in Canada next to Alaska. Buck had to work his way through a barbaric life as a sled dog where he moved mail back and forth between tundra territories. 

Theme of the Book

So what exactly was the 'Call' in the Call of the Wild? It was a call to return to our primordial selves. A return to instincts. A return to an environment that we existed in for countless lives. A displacement from civilization to privation. 

The call of the wild is the return of the wild instincts that lay dormant - "biologists use the term atavism to describe the reappearance in an individual of certain characteristics of a distant ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations. Buck exhibits atavistic characteristics when his instincts and memories of an impossibly distant past "call" him and reassert themselves into his behavior."

"The instincts, which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits, which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and become alive again."

It was Buck’s introduction to the primordial law that had me really intrigued. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. I found myself nearly in identical situations while attending the 7th grade. 

"Here was neither piece, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."

This book tells us there is something greater in ourselves, something we’re not using, that has perhaps lost its luster in the womb of Time, but it’s still there. And we can still hear the call that comes to us in the mid night when the moon is bright and far above us. 

Many times in the book Buck gets lost in a dream, a time when he reverted back to being with another human, but this human was hairier and more fearful than his future progeny. Buck was dreaming about being next to the first Homo Erectus. It’s that genius from the book that I really liked, a flickering glimpse into the real past of humans, where they really came from, what life was really like for them. 

Through the life of the dog, London showed us our own lives. Through the struggle of the dog to make sense of the world he lived in, to make sense of the new rules he found himself in, and to make sense of his own body and its own natural inclinations and how those inclinations fit exactly with his environment, is the genius of this book. 

It’s only 80 pages, but it’s the only book I’ve read, so far, that offers a real look at where we came from. The distant past was not so distant. 

In one of my readings, I found the quote that 'without knowing our past, we have no culture.' 

This book has helped me understand my past, and has helped me make sense of the sometimes barbaric world I find myself in. A world where at times, the rule of might is the rule, and at other times, the rule of law is the rule. 

"He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, ear or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of the time, he obeyed.”

Like one of Dante’s level of hell, Buck found himself taken by force from a world he was comfortable in, to another world, a darker world that nearly brought him to death’s door numerous times. 

The first ritual of being born into this new world was being clubbed on the head by a man in a red sweater that was there to break the new dogs. After many smacks on the head with the club, Buck learned. He learned the primordial law. 

"That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law… A man with the club was a lawgiver, and a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated."

That’s what this book was for me, a understanding of the rules of that primitive place, that distant land we came from.  

The ‘Call’ that Buck heard, was a call to revert back to where his ancestors thrived. A call that took him out of the new world of civilization, into an old world of struggle. But in the struggle, there was freedom and excitement. There was a place where his whole body felt alive. Each muscle, each instinct had a purpose, and it was finally being used to the maximum. 

London makes a myth out of this primitivism. But it’s only a myth. Generations of our ancestors yearned to be free of the confines of the struggle. That’s why there’s civilization at all! Because people were sick to death, literally and figuratively, from the struggle. Yes, it could be good, if you were the top dog, but not so much if you weren’t. 

Besides, there’s no chocolate in the primitive world, so really, what’s the point.

One Last Thing

Another interesting pattern from the book was the creation of the God/Spirit myth. Buck went from his familiar surroundings and eventually took his place in the wild, but he was more than just a wolf, he had transcended the normal confines of the wolf, and had become something greater than the wolf. A mythic wolflike god, or spirit.

In the book, the Indians had killed one of Buck’s masters, John Thornton, separating buck at last from the world of man. Buck came upon the scene of death after having spent a week in the wild hunting a great Bull Moose. As he saw his master’s party shot to death with arrows, Buck flew into a rage and slashed the throats of the Indians, one of the throats belonged to the chief of them. The indians were terrified and ran into the woods, scattered and afraid, not meeting back with each other for a week.

After that, Buck became totally wild, and he roamed the wild with a new wolf pack. The wolf pack would come into contact with the Indians every now and then and kill some of them. A great legend of the white wolf was passed down from the Indians, and they would not enter a valley that Buck had claimed for his own.

It’s not hard to see that from their respect to this great spirit, then future generations of Indians, too, would venerate that particular valley, and perhaps even bring offerings to it to appease it, or to praise it, or to gain some of the spirit’s power for themselves. And this is the birth of a god. 

The god was very particular to the specific location, those specific woods. In fact, Tacitus said the same things of the ancient Germani; they too would go to battle with the emblem of certain gods on their shields, gods that came from specific valleys and forests, where they would then give the Germani special power to overcome their enemies.

"They consecrate whole woods and groves, and by the names of the Gods they call these recesses; divinities these, which only in contemplation and mental reverence they behold." 

Isn’t Christ the same? Didn’t Christ exist in a particular location, from which he completely changed the nature of power in his location, going beyond the bounds of a mere human, to creating a myth of power and greatness out of his own mortality? Do we not still pray to that Great Spirit to gain some of his strength in our own daily struggles? And does it not work! At times, it certainly does.