Comparsion of Jack London's The Call of the Wild and John Myers O'Hard's Atavism

The call of the wild is about a dog named buck hat goes through many owners and then goes to the wild and joins a wolf pack. The central idea in The Call of The Wild is the way you treat animals can tell about you and your personality.

As Charles Darwin once said. “It is not the strongest of species that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”. Darwin’s quote strongly relates to “The Call of the Wild” in many circumstances where the stronger species was not able to thrive, but the one that was most able to adapt to change. In Jack London’s novel, “The Call of the Wild” it is conveyed that in order to survive in any environment one must be able to become accustomed to their surroundings. To survive by adaption one must drop old habits, be able to thrive in poor treatment environments, and love when given the chance. The main character in “The Call of the Wild” Buck, proves this idea on a multitude of occasions throughout his journey in the hostile Canadian Yukon Territory. The first adaptation that is made in “The Call of the Wild” is conveyed when one must drop their old habits to survive.

“Jack London is King” this was carved in to a block of wood found at the bus where Chris McCandless’s body was found. Chris McCandless admired Jack London as a man and a writer. Chris went into the wild’s of Alaska to prove that he could live off the land, with no modern conveniences, and no human contact. Jack London wrote stories about men and animals experiences against the environment, and survival against hardships, which were written from his own life. His works included individualism and the study of the laws of nature. Chris wanted to explore his own individualism, who he was, and how he was to live the rest of his life.

Recently while watching two old film classics, Vertigo and Notorious, I found myself thinking of other movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Most of his movies have many things in common, while remaining completely independent of each other. These two films have different plots, actors, and most obvious one is filmed in color the other black and white. Which leads me to believe that Alfred Hitchcock really knew what he was about; as a result his films all a have a distinctive theme about them. Both films keep you in a state of anticipation as the stories unfold and reveal the twist and turns that Alfred Hitchcock was famous for. Notorious was written in 1946 a year after World War II came to an end and the

Beaten, neglected, and loved Buck dealt with all those things. In the story ‘’ The Call of the Wild ‘’, the central theme is how one treats animals can reflect on what kind of person they are.

Jack London brings a natural instinct into the spotlight by defining that everyone has that primal call to the wild, and often one feels this when in a difficult situation. Giving into this ‘call of the wild’ leads to a different kind of adaptation, it makes you become primal to survive in a primal situation. Further into the book it states, “The others sat down and howled. And now the call came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sad down and howled.” (London, 1990, p.62). This is the defining moment of Jack’s book when Buck lets go of all ties to humans and decides to carve his own path, adapting the way he needs to, not the way that humans encouraged him. Soon, Buck changes himself completely to fit snugly into the environment and to prevent further torturous struggles with humans. These quotes combine to paint a picture of total and complete change when it comes to a new and unfavorable environment.

In his novel, The Call of the Wild, Jack London wants us to see the step beyond the survival of the fittest to the complete adaptation to and domination of a once unfamiliar and unforgiving environment. Using a third-person, limited omniscient narrator, the cold, icy Yukon wilderness, and a journey from lazy farm life to the deadly work of a sled dog, we see Buck, a Saint Bernard/Scotch Shepherd mix slowly return to his ancestral roots. As Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin states in her book The Call of the Wild: A Naturalistic Romance, “The book deals less with the concept of evolution than with that of devolution” (Courbin pg 57). London asks us to believe that happily domesticated farm dog, Buck, can not only survive life as a sled dog in the Yukon, but can become completely in tune with his primitive inner self, and ultimately thrive as a leader of a wolf pack.

A movie and a story, containing death at its heart, puts two characters through challenging settings that provides layers of conflicts that makes it difficult to keep their lives. In the story, The Most Dangerous Game, written by Richard Connell, is based off of a world famous hunter named Sanger Rainsford, is stuck on an island with another experienced hunter, General Zaroff, who wants to kill him. In the movie, High Noon, written by Carl Foreman, takes place in an western town that contains a marshal, Will Kane, who is facing death in the eyes at noon, has to get all the help he can get. They both contain the 3 factors, character, setting, and conflict, that are similar but are in different situations.

This year’s summer reading options were marvelous. It was a hard choice to choose what book to read, but in the end, I chose The Call of the Wild by Jack London. The Call of the Wild was an adventurous tale about a dog named Buck and his adventures as he was sold into a harsh life of relentless labor in the cold and brutal North. The author of this classic novel, Jack London, was a short-story writer and a prolific American novelist. He was born in San Francisco, California. He was known for his other novels, The Sea Wolf and White Fang. I chose this particular novel because I love reading classic novels and it seemed to be an interesting and exciting story. Finally, this was the novel of my choice because it was recommended to me by my grandma.

The first epigraph is written by Jack London (an author McCandless looks up to) yet again, except this time talking about a primordial beast was strong inside a buck. It referred to a small buck which has been forced to develop itself under the, “…trail life it grew and grew”. Thus representing McCandless and how he has developed due to being under the wildernesses wing in order to be developed the way he is now. With nature implicating struggles on that ‘buck’ it will be forced to go through a secret growth just like John King states.

Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we

Another important component of The Call of the Wild is the distinct tone London uses in the story. He primarily uses a simple and robust tone, such as on page 56 when Buck is physically drained from pulling the sleds. On page 56 London writes: “All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden bullets, 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 how own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood." This blatant and robust tone compliments the untamed setting and violence in the plot of the story.

Compare and contrast two works from the same genre which were written at least a generation or half a century apart. Consider and explain similarities and differences with regard to musical style and historical context.

In The Bear, the “wilderness” is one of the significant motifs. Issac and Faulkner saw the wilderness as gigantic, chaotic, and fearful. It gets over the cultural differentiation of human and separation, which are characteristics of the “Symbolic Order” of Lacan’s theories (Dobie 71). In other words, the chaotic wilderness alludes to the “Real Order,” which remains foreclosed form the analytic experience (Dobie 70-71). Moreover, the wilderness is considered as primitive chaos and part of semiotic. Actually, a description of Isaac’s first entrance into the wilderness shows how the passage conveys somewhat sexual impression. “…He entered

The author of The Call of the Wild, Jack London, heavily influenced the literary world with his inspirational works, specifically surrounding the theme of Naturalism. London followed the same theme, among others, in many of his works, focusing on how the environment affects its inhabitants and the details of the environment itself. The descriptions of nature London took the time to include in his books and the way they affect the story is what makes his works truly remarkable. He strongly committed himself to his works and put a great deal of effort into researching them to ensure accuracy. In The Call of the Wild, there are three main themes that are made evident: naturalism, coming of age, and loss of innocence. Naturalism is what London is most known for, and is shown through his attention to the surroundings of his characters. Coming of age was displayed through specific life changing events that altered Buck’s perspective. And finally, loss of innocence can be seen in the gradual, but sure decline of Buck’s morals.