He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.

The Call of the Wild  by Jack London
First published in 1903

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
 The Call of the Wild  is a tale of friendship, brutality, risk, and the laws of nature. Our protagonist is Buck, a dog who's a cross between a German Shepherd and a St. Bernard. When our tale begins, he's living his best life as the pet to a Judge in California. But little does he know that Manuel, one of the workers on the Judge's ranch, has a gambling problem. Manuel dognaps Buck and delivers him to some cruel men who proceed to 'break him' for the journey north to the Yukon. We're just before the start of the 20th century, you see, and it's GOLD RUSH TIME. So Buck ends up with a series of masters, some fine, some awful, some move on, some die, blah blah blah. Sorry, I wasn't that into the whole gold rush story line, so I'm not going to dig too deep here. After his worst master, he lands a great one in John Thornton, and Buck turns into a masterful sled dog under his influence. They make it to the mine and Buck is happy and proud, but soon he feels the tug of the greater natural world (or some might say, The Call of Wild ;)). He spends some time on the proverbial fence, dancing in between the forest sauvage and the world of man's best friend. In the end, John Thornton is killed by a band of Yeehats (who are of course depicted as evil and also who WERE ALREADY LIVING IN THAT LAND the white dudes were mining, so you know, agree to disagree) and after tearing lots of Yeehats apart with his bare jaws, Buck joins a wolf pack full time.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, there were some things I liked about this book, but there were also many things I did not like. On the whole, I can see why it was seminal, but I also feel like it's pretty problematic in a few ways. I will leave it to you to decide if you want to embark on it, dear readers. 

Here are my thoughts!

On brutality
I had a hard time reading the first part of this book because Buck was treated so brutally. I suppose that's part of his journey from domesticated pet to 'animal of the wild', but I like to think he could have come into his 'wild' self without being so violently abused. I have to say that a lot of the language about breaking dogs and crushing their spirit and bending them to the will of man felt a LOT like the language I've read about slavery. There's even a line about Buck feeling 'a fear that no master could be permanent' that felt a lot like the mentality of a slave. So I felt like it was problematic that black people in America were still coming out of this kind of culture (and white people were definitely very slow on moving way from it) and yet Jack London was writing about this dog we should really empathize with. 

Dog named 'Nig'
Yeah... so that's a thing. I was not here for it. Felt super racist and gross and also reminded me of Jack Bellew calling Clare that as a nickname. Let's just all agree that it should not be a nickname for anyone where white people are involved. #kthanxbye

They broke their own trail
The dogs are having to do all kinds of crazy things to get the silly men up into the middle of nowhere to go Gold hunting, and at one point it mentions how much harder it is when the dogs have to break their own trail. It reminded me of the snowshoeing course I took when I was living in New Hampshire, and how ridiculously hard it was to break trail when there were several feet of snow. I really felt for the dogs!

Let's hear it for the novellas
While there were many things I did not like about this book, there were many beautiful things about it, and after reading two short novels back to back, I have to say I really enjoyed how much the writers packed into those hundred-odd pages. 

Buck's moccasins
I loved this scene: 

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which François had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when François forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them.

Later his feet get 'hardened' to the trail and he doesn't need the moccasins anymore, but I loved this moment. 

#atavistic
If we were looking for a hashtag for this book, it would definitely be #atavistic. The whole book is basically about evolving (or devolving) into your truest self.

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into 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 and over the face of dead matter that did not move. This writing is just stunning. 

A mercy
It was crazy how much they rode the dogs until they died, and it felt so selfish to me. 

His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran up on him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.

On likening themselves to "the Indian", and then simultaneously painting them the villain
Yeah, so like I mentioned in the plot summary, the Yeehats were villainized at the end for protecting their own land, but there were tons of places throughout the journey to the Yukon and back where the white men prided themselves on being like the Indian. It felt like they were trying to have their cake and eat it, too. 

On killing a black bear and a moose
Buck does this. During some of his wilding phases. It was gnarly (and a little gross, tbqh) but I was also a little impressed at the concept of a dog taking down such enormous and powerful animals. This is a picture of a "St. Shepherd", which seems to be a mix of the same two breeds as Buck. 

Lines I Liked

• 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 star and howling down through the centuries and through him. 

• They were perambulating skeletons. 


• With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. 

• But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness - imagination. 

• But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called - called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.

Sending you all thoughts of safety, health, and healing! On to Sage Descent, or something of that ilk.