The Call of the Wild

by Jack London

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called.

Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.

During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat;

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was resolved.

That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.

“He’s no slouch at dog-breakin’, that’s wot I say,” one of the men on the wall cried enthusiastically. “Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays,” was the reply of the driver,

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it.

That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused.

the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.

he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

Perrault grinned.

Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand—“One in ten t’ousand,” he commented mentally.

Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away

Curly and he were taken below by Perrault and turned over to

They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and while he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew honestly to respect them.

He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.

Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.

They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.

So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went down.

a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so could not of himself fear it.

The toil of the traces seemed the supreme expression of their being, and all that they lived for and the only thing in which they took delight.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness, which had characterized his old life.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper.

the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them.

not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again.

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew.

covert mutiny of Buck,

the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred.

the blood lust, the joy to kill—all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

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.

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 and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness—imagination. He fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well.

Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good.

At a bound Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the superior even of Spitz,

But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that Buck excelled.

that was the last of François and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out of Buck’s life for good.

He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before a seeming familiarity; 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.