The Call of the Wild — Summary & Analysis
by Jack London
Jack London published The Call of the Wild in 1903, and it remains one of the most widely read American novels ever written. Set against the frozen landscape of the Klondike Gold Rush, the story follows Buck — a 140-pound Saint Bernard and Scotch Shepherd mix — from his pampered life on a California estate into the brutal, beautiful wilderness of the Yukon. Few novels have so powerfully dramatized what lies beneath the surface of civilized life.
From Comfort to the Klondike
Buck begins the story as the favored pet of Judge Miller, lord of a sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley estate. He is well-fed, respected, and accustomed to comfort. That life ends abruptly when Manuel, one of the estate's gardeners burdened by gambling debts, sells Buck to dog traders who ship him north to meet the demand for strong sled dogs during the Gold Rush of 1897. The journey strips Buck of everything familiar. He is crated, starved, and beaten into submission — a brutal introduction summarized in the novel's phrase, the "law of club and fang." What cannot be broken, however, is Buck's intelligence and will.
The Sled Dog Gauntlet
In the Yukon, Buck is sold to Francois and Perrault, experienced Canadian mail carriers who run a government dog team. Here London traces Buck's rapid education in the realities of sled-dog life: how to dig a snow hollow for warmth, how to steal food without being caught, how to read the moods of men and dogs alike. The most dangerous obstacle is Spitz, the team's alpha, a cunning white dog who goads Buck at every turn. Their rivalry builds across hundreds of miles of frozen trail until a moonlit battle on an open plain decides the matter — Buck defeats Spitz and claims the lead position, a role the entire team immediately accepts. The arc echoes London's Darwinist conviction that nature rewards those best fitted to master their environment.
Cruelty, Kindness, and John Thornton
After Francois and Perrault, Buck passes through several owners, not all of them competent or kind. A trio of inexperienced stampeders — Hal, Charles, and Mercedes — work the team past exhaustion, feeding them half-rations and ignoring warnings that the spring ice is failing. At Dawson, a man named John Thornton intervenes, cutting Buck from the traces before the team crosses a river that swallows the sled and every remaining dog. Thornton is the one human for whom Buck feels true love. He nurses Buck back to health, and Buck repays him with fierce devotion: saving him from drowning, attacking a man who threatens him, and winning a $1,600 wager by pulling a thousand-pound sled load from a standing start.
The Wild Calls
Even as Buck's bond with Thornton deepens, a counter-pull grows stronger. Wandering the forests while Thornton and his partners prospect for gold, Buck encounters wolves, hunts game, and feels what London describes as a stirring of ancient memory — the lives of his wild forebears filtering back through blood and instinct. He answers the call in stages: first a day away, then two, then longer. London frames this not as regression but as homecoming, Buck recovering a self that civilization had only ever covered, never erased. The concept of atavism — the resurgence of ancestral traits — sits at the heart of the novel's meaning.
The End of Civilization
The novel's final turn is violent and decisive. Returning from a long hunt, Buck finds Thornton's camp destroyed and his master killed by a band of Yeehat warriors. Buck drives off the attackers, killing several. With Thornton gone, there is nothing left tethering him to the human world. He joins a wolf pack and, in time, becomes its leader. Among the Yeehats, a legend grows: the Ghost Dog, a great wolf-dog that runs at the head of the pack and cannot be killed. Each year, Buck returns once to the place where Thornton died — his only backward glance at the life he left behind.
Why It Endures
London drew on his own experience in the Klondike, and the novel's physical details carry the weight of lived observation. But The Call of the Wild has lasted because its central question reaches far beyond dogs and gold rushes: what happens when comfort strips away, when the rules of civilization no longer apply, and what we discover about ourselves in the space that remains. Readers who want to explore London's companion novel — which inverts the journey, following a wolf toward domestication — can find it in White Fang. His landmark survival story To Build a Fire and the Yukon tale The Story of Keesh explore the same frozen world in short form. Read the full text of The Call of the Wild free here at American Literature.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Call of the Wild is a 1903 novel by Jack London about a large domesticated dog named Buck who is stolen from his comfortable California home and sold into service as a sled dog during the Klondike Gold Rush. Over the course of the novel, Buck endures brutal hardship, forms a deep bond with a man named John Thornton, and gradually answers the pull of his wild instincts, eventually joining a wolf pack in the Yukon wilderness. London uses Buck's journey to explore themes of survival, instinct, and the thin line between civilization and nature.
At the end of The Call of the Wild, Buck returns from a long hunt to find his beloved master John Thornton has been killed by a band of Yeehat warriors. Buck attacks the Yeehats, killing several and driving the rest away, then abandons human civilization entirely. He joins a wolf pack in the wilderness and eventually becomes its leader. London closes the novel with an image of Buck running at the head of his pack, a legend among the local people who call him the "Ghost Dog" of the North. Each year he returns once to the site of Thornton's death.
The protagonist of The Call of the Wild is Buck, a 140-pound Saint Bernard and Scotch Shepherd mix. His owners in the novel include Judge Miller (his original California owner), Francois and Perrault (experienced Canadian government mail carriers), and John Thornton, the kind-hearted prospector who rescues Buck from cruel overseers and becomes the one human Buck genuinely loves. Spitz is Buck's primary canine antagonist — the team's alpha whose rivalry with Buck builds to a decisive fight. Hal, Charles, and Mercedes are the incompetent stampeders who nearly work the team to death before Thornton intervenes.
The central themes of The Call of the Wild are the conflict between civilization and nature, survival of the fittest, and atavism — the reawakening of ancestral instincts that domestication has suppressed but not destroyed. Jack London was deeply influenced by Darwin and the naturalist movement, and the novel reflects the idea that beneath the surface of civilized life lie older, more fundamental drives. A related theme is the nature of loyalty and love: Buck's devotion to Thornton represents civilization's best offering, but even that is not enough to override the pull of the wild. The struggle for mastery — to be the lead dog, the top wolf — runs as a constant undercurrent.
"The call of the wild" refers to the instinctive pull that Buck feels toward his ancestral, pre-domesticated self as the novel progresses. London depicts this call as something Buck literally hears — a howl at the edges of camp, voices from deep in the forest — that represents the life his wild forebears lived before dogs became companions to humans. As Buck's experiences in the Yukon strip away the habits of civilization, the call grows louder and more insistent until it becomes impossible to resist. London suggests this call is universal: that civilization is a veneer, and underneath all domesticated creatures — human and animal alike — ancient instincts wait to resurface.
The Call of the Wild and White Fang are companion novels that tell mirror-image stories. The Call of the Wild follows a domesticated dog moving toward the wild, while White Fang follows a wolf-dog moving from the wild toward civilization. Jack London published White Fang in 1906, three years after The Call of the Wild, and has said the later novel was written partly as a conscious complement. Together they form a complete picture of London's thinking about nature, instinct, and the relationship between wild animals and human society.
The Call of the Wild was published in 1903 and is in the public domain, so it is freely and legally available online. You can read the complete text here at American Literature: The Call of the Wild by Jack London. The novel is divided into seven chapters, from "Into the Primitive" through "The Sounding of the Call," and can be read in a few hours. For classroom use, our study guides collection offers additional resources for many classic texts.
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