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What Is The Diction In The Call Of The Wild

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Call Of The Wild
In the classic, Call Of The Wild, by Jack London, Buck, a southland dog from California, is sold off to gold seekers during the Alaskan Gold Rush. He is thrust into the brutal and unforgiving life of a sled dog and is vilely treated. Buck then must adapt to the harsh life he has been placed into by learning to fight and survive in order to prosper. Years after he was drafted into the gold rush, he is rescued from his suffering by a man named John Thornton. While bonding with John, Buck is also growing closer to nature. When Buck was out exploring, John’s camp was attacked by indians, and he is killed. Buck then decides to return to the wild and live like his ancestors. The author is highly intentional of the diction used in …show more content…

At the beginning of the book the diction describes a perfect, warm, and sunny place where Buck lives. “Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches” (London 1). Towards the end of the book, the diction describes a cold and dark place. “At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness, had forced them to grope for a camping place. They could hardly have fared worse” (London 15). By using diction to describe the change in scenery from warm and light, to dark and cold, the mood of the reader changes as …show more content…

“This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, and 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 he observed them he would fail to prosper” (London 13). The tone transitions from a happy to serious and cruel tone through diction by changing the author's view of the

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