That the book has never gone out of print since its first publication in 1903, speaks volumes about the powerful and moving story contained within its pages. A must for every animal lover, it is a beautiful tale of a dog’s loyalty, friendship and above all yearning to escape back to its true nature

REVIEW ADVISORY:

Please be aware that, while the following review contains a number of adorable animals pics, young Ricky Schroder, who starred in the movie version of the novel, will NOT appear...I feared that would raise the sugar content of this report to diabetically dangerous levels.
 
Awwwwwww.....the classic “coming of age” story, with the nifty twister of having the main character be a pawky puppy going on doggiehood. I really licked it liked it, so two paws up there.

BTW, I'm not going to slow down for spoilers, except for the very end, as I assume most people reading this are pretty familiar with the story. Plus, in this case, knowing the story elements shouldn't have much of an impact on the reader's enjoyment, since it's the experience of the journey that holds the power. Of course, if you disagree, than you are welcome to go blurry-eyed over the words and just focus on the pics...that's why they're there.
 
PLOT SUMMARY:

Our main character is Buck, a Saint Bernard. When we are first introduced to our husky headliner, the Buckster is Doggymesticated and living a happy, carefree existence with his kindly owner.
n  n
 
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your opinion of how Buck’s life turns out in the end, Buck is puppynapped by an odious offalhead with a gambling problem**.

**WHOOOOAAAA there tonto!! As a life long resident of the wholesome, family-friendly City of Las Vegas, I feel the need to pause briefly and toss out some support to my hometown casinos that are currently struggling through revenue declines due to the economic slowdown and remind those of you considering a trip to Sin City that

.......Oh, almost forgot. On a related note, I've also been asked by the Institute for Alcohol Awesomeness Awareness to inform you that drinking alcohol can lead to the development of super powers, so go ahead and pick up a twelve pack on the way home and who knows, you may be flying to work tomorrow…........
 
Okay, now back on review.

This is where things start to go really FUBAR for Buck. Our young hero is shipped to Alaska, where he's sold to a pair of French Canadians to be trained as a sled dog. Having a lot of spunky spirit, Buck doesn't take kindly to being stolen, starved and struck, and so goes into rather violent attack mode when finally released from his cage after the long journey.

Sadly, Buck is quickly “beat down” and seemingly “broken” as part of his training as a sled dog. In reality (and just between you and me), Buck isn’t broken at all, but learns enough “self control” to act the part while secretly maintaining his desire to be free. You know, like this poor fella:
n  n

While held by the Frenchies from North of the border, Buck is introduced to other dogs being housed there, and quickly learns the ugly reality of “survival of the fittest” by which the dogs live. Eventually, Buckers becomes a pack leader due to his size, strength and intelligence (remember we are talking a big Saint Bernard here):
n  n 

Later, Buck is sold to a man named Charles and his family. These people are all kinds of stupid and know exatcly zippo about sledding or surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. They are simply caught up in the fever of the Klondike Gold Rush and trying to strike it rich. Initially, Buck is, sigh, resigned to follow their lead even though he senses their overabundance of incompetence is going to lead to some fugly mishap for him. n  n

However, it soon becomes apparent that the family’s bungling stupidity and complete lack of understanding regarding everything from sledding, to the harsh Alaskan environment, to the fact that snow is cold, is leading everyone to a "DANGER Will Robinson" moment. Having no comprehension of how long or hard the journey to the Yukon will be, Charles and his family initially waste the food supply by overfeeding the dogs thinking it will make them more able to endure the long work day. Holy Moly Canolli is this a bad idea!! Anyone who owns a dog knows they will continue to eat as long as you continue to feed...even to the point of:
n  n

As you might expect, the food supply soon dwindles. Charles and the other wizards begin to basically starve the dogs while expecting them to work even harder and sled longer during the day.  Uh....anyone else see trouble-a-brewing.

Eventually (thank the stars), the group runs into an experienced mountain man named John Thornton. I won’t give away what happens next except to say that John rescues Buck from the group and nurses him back to health. This is such sweet, tender moment in the story that I thought it deserved an equally sweet picture, thus:
n  n

Buck comes to love Thornton and grows devoted to him, though he still feels a calling to be free (no marriage jokes, please....please). During his time with Thornton, Buck begins exploring the wilderness and becomes acquainted with the wolves from the area.

*******MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*******MAJOR SPOILER ALERT******* MAJOR SPOILER ALERT******* MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*******
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Okay, for those of you still with me, one night, Buck returns from hunting to find that Thornton has been brutally killed by a group of local Indians. As you can imagine, Buck is a wee bit upset at this and decides that maybe the Indians...n  n.......
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And so Buck goes absolutely BUCK WILD (yep, that's where the expression came from, how cool is that). From there, as far as the Indians are concerned, it is:
n  n

You mess with Buck's friend and you are just asking for five varieties of trouble.

Afterwards, Buck comes to understand that his old life is over and follows the wolves into the wild to live as a part of the pack.
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*******END OF MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*******END OF MAJOR SPOILER ALERT******* END OF MAJOR SPOILER ALERT******* END OF MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*******

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Overall, being an animal lover, I couldn't help but love Buck and his story was interesting. There were also parts that were difficult to deal with for the same reason. I loved the final resolution of the story and the contrast between puppy Buck at the beginning of the story and the doggie Buck at the end. I didn't rate this higher because I didn't love the prose as much as the puppy and the pacing, even for such a short book, was a little uneven.

Still, there is much to recommend this and I would certainly support your checking this classic out.

3.5 stars. RECOMMENDED.

If my dog could read, he would never shut up about how great this book is.

"The Call of the Wild" is the story of Buck, a beautiful and powerful dog who was stolen from his comfy home in California and forced to become a sled dog in Alaska. Buck starts to shed his civilized ways and learns how to survive in the wild. He is noble and fierce, and eventually becomes a leader of the pack.

As I said, my dog would love this book. My 10-year-old nephew would love this book. It's a classic adventure story and I'm glad I read it.

I read this at age twelve or thirteen, and it was my best reading in Jr HS, along with Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I have not read it since, hence the four rather than five stars. I recall its having a formative influence on my lifetime of animal interests, culminating in my book on bird language, Birdtalk (2003). I recall the differences in personality (dogality) between the various dogs. Was White Fang one, or was that another book? My memories of a half century ago are not crystal clear.
Oh, thanks Maurizio for reminding me. Call of the Wild featured Buck, but I don't now recall the differences in the adventures. I do recall a big dog's judgement of the other dogs--one part Newfy (my first English Department boss raised 'em in Pittsfield, MA). I do recall the wolf pack Buck tries to join at the end--guess he succeeds. And I recall the French Canadian man whom Buck admires. Maybe London's why my family spent every vacation driving north to Quebec--even Thanksgiving--where we had Crêpe dindonneau in Montreal, and saw a revolting all-Picasso show at the Musée de Montréal. Most of the paintings cut up women, though his early (blue period?) I enjoyed.
London wrote, like Twain on a typewriter, in a (much bigger) cottage--Twain's was at his in-law's farm in Ithaca, NY--London's, just north of Oakland, on 1400 acres he bought with his earnings. Twain bought a grand, bourgeoise house in Hartford and invested unsuccessfully. Maybe London's investment was in fact his acreage and proposed grand stone house that burned before he lived there.

“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With the Judge’s sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working partnership; with the Judge’s grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.”

In reading this book, I had my long standing belief confirmed that one cannot know how much one has loved another human being until the latter has been removed for whatever reason and that also applies to non-humans. And we are talking about a dog here:

“From his St Bernard father he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.”

Buck’s cosy lifestyle was to change forever in the fall of 1897, when the lure of gold with the Klondike strike had men rushing to northern Canada to take advantage of what they perceived to be instant wealth. The one necessity to achieve this was having sled dogs and consequently Buck was taken, subjected to very rough treatment, and ended up as one of them.

But Buck is no ordinary dog. He soon realizes that he has to fight for survival in his new unwanted lifestyle both with living on the meagre food rations he was given and the aggressivity of his fellow dogs. Nevertheless, this is a great dog and he soon becomes a legend in these northern lands with his prowess of pulling heavy loads and his sheer excellence as a sled dog. He even won his owners $1,600 (rather a lot of money then) when he pulled a load of 1,000 lbs a distance of 100 metres.

His primordial instincts, however, gradually come to the fore and I have no doubt that when he met the first wolf and spent a day with him, that he would have reverted to type but then choice unexpectedly had come into the equation with that one word “love” and that came in the form of John Thornton who had saved his life.

And as a result with that choice there are two roads that he can follow and so what does Buck decide to do?

I don’t know why this book has had such a dramatic effect on me. Perhaps the era had something to do with it, the immense lands of Canada, and Buck’s continual fight for survival. How could one not admire and love this incredible dog? But imperceptibly he is changing too:

“The blood longing became stronger than ever before. 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.”

And finally the following poem states it all with ancestry, instincts, and history:

It is taken from "Atavism," a poem by John Myers O’Hara:

“Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom’s chain;
Apart from its brumal sleep
Wakes the ferine strain”

And Buck was indeed awakened.

I can never be more grateful that I came across this children’s classic. Where was I in my youth that I was never told about this spellbinding book? It’s not long but I actually browsed through the book again after finishing it. I didn’t want to let go of those incredibly moving words by Jack London.

اولین کتاب امسال..قفسه های کتابم رو که میدیدم امروز این کتاب به چشمم خورد..بعد از 9سال دوباره خواندنش حس قدیمی و خوبی داشت..پردازش داستان فوق العاده بوده و جک لندن یه شاهکار رو خلق کرده..قطعا تجربه ای که در اون نواحی داشته الهام بخش و مبدا خلق این اثر بوده,و واقعا نوشته هایی که از تجربه برخاسته اند غنی اند..

Men are so cruel. The way they break animals is deplorable; they use them, exploit them and abuse them all in the name of sport, entertainment and human convenience. Men are cruel. They try to conquer rather than living in a world of mutual respect; it’s man who has lost his nature, and he imposes such a thing on everything he comes across, but the animals will fight back:

“With a roar that was almost lion like in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man”

Buck is kidnapped (dognapped is probably more appropriate) and forced into submission by a brutal overseer. He is forced to be a sledge dog, a life of servitude he initially enjoys. The dogs enjoy the sense of purpose and quickly form their own pack. However, like trade goods, the animals are sold off to a new owner, one who is foolish and inexperienced when it comes to animal care. He pushes the dogs too far; they start to die, and he pushes the remainder even further. He cares not for the fallen, and leaves them discarded in the snow without as much as a second thought: they are nothing to him.

It’s this kind of attitude that is almost the death of Buck, but he comes back. For all man’s wickedness, he also has the capability for good. Buck experiences human kindness for the first time, forming the deep bond that dog can have with man. He relishes in the friendship. It’s the only affection he has received in a long, long, time. He doesn’t want to lose it; he become possessive and violent in regards to his master’s attention: he becomes a pet. He fights other dogs for the right to sit by his human’s side. But such a thing is unnatural to him, and what starts to form is an internal war within his mind. He wants to find his true self again.

“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.”



Indeed, the importance of this work resides in the title. The real issue isn’t a debate of ethics associated with animal treatment, but the act of being separated from one’s true self. Buck’s innate drive calls for only one thing, to be with his own kind. That’s what human kind has deprived him of. His natural instincts are at war with the obedient behaviour that has been bred into his psyche after domestication.

n  He wants freedom, he longs for it, and the wild calls him home. n

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“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”

Man can be cruel, especially where animals are concerned, and especially in the past before they were enlightened to decency toward our furry friends. Buck actually had a good life for awhile, but soon he was kidnapped and forced into a situation of hard labor, beatings, and pack hierachy. Proving the strong can survive, Buck unleashes the wildness in his beast, carrying the reader through a fascinating journey that ends on a beautiful note.

The short book goes through several stages. The hardest to endure is the initial kidnapping, selling, and seeing Buck have to work his way up through an unfriendly pack to lead a sleigh in the unfriendly Alaskan wildnerness. Not all dogs were as lucky, and that's just sad. The second stage is when he sees an actual decent human again, and with the same strength that allowed his climb and survival against the other dogs, he gives the same strength of loyalty to his new two-legged friend. It's a bleak book overall, especially for the good, so while the book doesn't end up on a beautiful and happy note, it does end on another stage of Buck's life where he fully embraces the peace of the wild.

London writes beautifully and he makes his characters fiercely legitimate, but ultimately I'm not seeing a pure focused point to the story other than a bleak and harsh adventure. Life is unfair, as Buck well knows, but he does the best he can with what he has, so perhaps this is the eventual point.

I can't rate this five stars because there was too much turn-off with what the animals endured, and there are some rambling areas, but ultimately it's a well-known classic worth visiting.

This is a rather brutal book, and animal activists desiring political correctness would have drawn and quartered Jack London for writing it, if he were alive today. And yet, if literature is supposed to expose humanity in all its imperfections, then I applaud the author for having shown us the harsh north of the Klondike through the eyes of an animal.

Buck, the mixed breed of St. Bernard and Scotch Sheppard, has all the inherent instincts and capability of the hunter-survivor, and yet is domesticated and coddled in a respected judge’s farm in Southern California. However, in another part of the world, dogs are the “other gold,” especially in the Klondike, for they can transport supplies across the ice. Buck is kidnapped and sold by an unscrupulous employee on the farm to settle a gambling debt.

So begins Buck’s travels north, handed from master to master, his fortunes, and tribulations dependent on who owns him, just like the slaves in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He enters the world run by the Law of Club and Fang. The man in the red sweater, a trader in abducted dogs, is his first shock; the man tries to break Buck with a vicious beating, something he had never faced from a human before. Buck learns that he must feign obedience in order to live to fight another day. He not only has to survive his various masters, but he has to survive the pack of huskies he is thrown in with – some who become allies and others who view him as a threat. Attacks come from humans as well his fellow dogs, when least expected. The battles are fierce, and it is indeed a survival of the fittest situation. Buck learns and sheds his domesticity quickly.

Eventually the predator in him rises to the surface, as well as his will to lead the pack in this hostile environment. However, no sooner has his leadership position on the sled team been attained, when he is sold to a trio of amateur prospectors who overload the sleds and starve the dogs, driving them over ridiculous distances. Near to death, Buck is finally rescued by another damaged and injured man called John Thornton. Now begins a symbiotic relationship between man and dog, one saving the other from peril, both fiercely loyal to each other.

As Thornton’s prospects improve, thanks to Buck, the dog is freer to roam the frozen north, becoming more of the predator his ancestors were, even seeing visions of man as an ape from previous incarnations. The dog merging with his ancestor, the wolf, is complete when Buck kills larger prey, including man. Buck transcends life into legend by coming to be known in the North as the Ghost Wolf, and the breed of timber wolves in that area are reputed to have his unique marking.

There are many lessons here: animals need to roam free and should never be domesticated; slavery is a vile industry, and animal slavery is no less odious than human slavery; greed kills; hierarchy is prevalent not only in the human kingdom but also in the animal kingdom; survival of the fittest applies to humans and animals alike.

Having read the comic-book version of this novel years ago and seen sanitized and romanticized movie renditions, this original book is far more compelling and raw. A great read, if the suffering of dogs doesn’t turn your stomach.

Jack London's 1903 classic was a very tough read for me as it is pretty much non-stop animal cruelty that is often taken to the extreme, but, I so loved Buck, his unbreakable spirit, ability to adapt and need to please.

A worthwhile book that I would still recommend.

I FIRST read Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" as a Classics Illustrated comic-book in the 1960s. I was in my early teens and was hardly interested in who Mr. London was or what he did for a living. All I was interested in was reading comic-books and enjoying them.

Finally, I was able to read the 32,000-word adventure novella this year in September-October. The book ended up in my list of favourite books. I also felt somewhat disappointed with myself for not having read the tome during my schoolboy days or even my 20s. Anyway, better late than never!
The lead character of the book is Buck, a large and powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd. The first chapter opens with the first quatrain of John Myers O'Hara's poem, Atavism. The stanza outlines one of the main themes of The Call of the Wild: that Buck, when removed from the peaceful Santa Clara Valley of California, where he was raised at a judge's house, will revert to his wolf heritage with its inborn instincts and characteristics.
Here is O'Hara's poem "Atavism" in its entirety so that you can enjoy it as well as grasp its significance as to why Mr. London used its first stanza to start his book.

Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain ;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.

Helots of houses no more,
Let us be out, be free ;
Fragrance through the window and door
Wafts from the woods, the sea.

After the torpor of will,
Morbid the inner strife,
Welcome the animal thrill.
Lending a zest to life.

Banish the volumes revered,
Sever from centuries dead ;
Ceilings the lamp flicker cheered
Barter for stars instead.

Temple thy dreams with the trees,
Nature thy god alone ;
Worship the sun and the breeze,
Altars where none atone.

Voices of Solitude call,
Whisper of sedge and stream ;
Loosen the fetters that gall,
Back to the primal scheme.

Feel the great throbbing terrene
Pulse in thy body beat,
Conscious again of the green
Verdure beneath the feet.

Callous to pain as the rose,
Breathe with instinct's delight ;
Live the existence that goes
Soulless into the night.

The suffering that the dog goes through in the first few chapters is bound to make you cringe. Sometimes you truly wonder how Homo sapiens can be so heartless. But then again all kinds of people make this world.
London spent almost a year in the Yukon collecting material for the book. The story was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903 in four parts before being published a month later in book form. The tome’s great success immediately made London rich and popular. More than that it had his name included in the canon of world-famous American writers. Authors like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner were influenced by his writing.


The Call of the Wild (cover of the Saturday Evening Post shown) is about the survival of the fittest.

If you have not read the book, make sure to do so in 2017. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. It has thrills, chills and spills. Thrills as in thrilling chases; chills as in chilling icy weather and spills as in dog fights to the death with spilling blood.
A few nights back I was able to watch the 1972 version of "The Call of the Wild" directed by Ken Annakin and starring Charlton Heston, Michèle Mercier, Raimund Harmstorf, George Eastman and Maria Rohm. It is a co-production between the UK, France, Italy, Spain and West Germany, which is why it has a multi-star cast with actors from all these countries. It was made in Finland which is exactly why the film has a breathtaking winter landscape. John Cabrera has done a magnificent job of the cinematography.
Even though the director has skipped some of the initial parts of the book and has made some changes probably because of avoiding not to make the film too long, he has still done a pretty good job by making quite an exciting film.


The DVD cover of "The Call of the Wild".


A dog is indeed a man's best friend. Buck shakes hand with a human friend.


Charlton Heston, who plays Thornton, with his pet Buck.

Rilettura 4.5⭐