Plot Summary
After Buck wins sixteen hundred dollars for John Thornton in a bet, Thornton pays off his debts and sets out with partners Pete and Hans to search for a legendary lost gold mine in the eastern wilderness. For months they wander through uncharted territory, following obliterated trails and discovering relics of those who came before—an ancient path leading nowhere, a crumbling hunting lodge with a Hudson Bay Company flintlock. When spring arrives, they discover not the Lost Cabin but a shallow placer in a broad valley where gold shows "like yellow butter" in the washing pan. They work feverishly, packing the gold into fifty-pound moosehide bags.
With little work to occupy him, Buck feels the forest’s call with increasing urgency. He has visions of a primitive, short-legged hairy man and experiences wild yearnings that draw him into the woods for days at a time. One night he follows a wolf howl to an open clearing and encounters a lean timber wolf. After a tense pursuit, the two sniff noses and run side by side through the wilderness. Buck feels he is finally answering the call—until he remembers Thornton and turns back. He returns to camp in a frenzy of affection but soon wanders again, killing a black bear, scattering wolverines, and growing into a magnificent creature at the peak of his physical powers.
In autumn, Buck spends four relentless days cutting a massive bull moose from its herd and bringing it down. Returning to camp, he senses something wrong. He finds Nig dead with arrows in his body, Hans lying face down riddled with arrows, and the Yeehat people dancing around the wrecked camp. In a hurricane of fury, Buck attacks the Yeehats, killing several including their chief, and scatters the rest into the forest. He discovers that Pete was killed in his blankets and traces Thornton’s scent to a deep pool from which no trail leads away. John Thornton is dead.
That night, a wolf pack pours into the clearing. Buck fights them to a standstill, then recognizes his wild brother among them. An old wolf sits and howls at the moon, and Buck joins the howl. He runs with the pack into the forest, answering the call at last. In the years that follow, the Yeehats speak of a Ghost Dog that leads the wolves, and each summer a great wolf visits the valley to mourn by the gold-filled stream before departing.
Character Development
Chapter 7 completes Buck’s transformation from domesticated dog to wild creature. His dual identity—loyal companion in camp, lethal predator in the forest—reaches a breaking point when Thornton’s death severs his last bond to civilization. London charts Buck’s physical apex in extraordinary detail: muscles "surcharged with vitality," reflexes so fast that perceiving, determining, and responding seem simultaneous. His attack on the Yeehats is the only moment he lets passion override cunning, driven by love rather than survival instinct. The chapter also reveals Thornton’s character through his unafraid, unhurried approach to the wilderness—a man content to let the "timecard" be "drawn upon the limitless future."
Themes and Motifs
The central theme of the call of the wild reaches its climax. Buck’s recurring visions of the hairy man represent ancestral memory—a genetic inheritance pulling him toward a primitive existence. The tension between civilization and wildness resolves definitively: Thornton’s death removes the only emotional anchor keeping Buck tethered to the human world. The motif of gold and greed runs beneath the surface—the lost mine that lured men to their deaths ultimately lures Thornton to his. Death and rebirth pervade the chapter: the moose hunt, the Yeehat massacre, and Buck’s symbolic rebirth as leader of the wolf pack.
Literary Devices
Foreshadowing suffuses Part II: Buck senses "a new stir in the land" and "a sense of calamity" as he returns from the moose hunt, building dread before the massacre is revealed. London employs extended metaphor throughout, describing Buck’s vitality as a flood that "streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant." The parallel structure of the moose hunt and the Yeehat attack mirrors Buck’s dual nature—patient predator and explosive avenger. Symbolism is central: the timber wolf represents Buck’s wild identity; Thornton’s body hidden in the muddy pool symbolizes civilization swallowed by the wilderness. The closing image of Buck howling by the gold-strewn stream each summer adds an elegiac, mythic quality, elevating Buck from animal to legend.