Plot Summary
Chapter 24, "The Call of Kind," follows White Fang's continued adaptation to life in the Southland at Sierra Vista. Living in comfort with plenty of food and no work, White Fang flourishes under human kindness. Yet beneath his domesticated exterior, a suggestion of lurking ferocity remains—the wolf in him merely sleeps. He keeps his distance from other dogs, a consequence of his brutal puppyhood under Lip-lip and his fighting days with Beauty Smith. Southland dogs instinctively fear him, greeting him with snarls, though his bared fangs are enough to send them retreating.
White Fang's one persistent trial is Collie, who never forgives him for the chicken-killing episode and acts as a self-appointed enforcer, shadowing him around the grounds. Despite this annoyance, White Fang achieves a philosophical tolerance and calm he has never known. He learns to laugh when Weedon Scott teases him, and they develop a playful roughhousing that White Fang permits no one else. When Scott's horse throws him and breaks his leg, White Fang overcomes his inability to bark and races home to alert the family, proving his intelligence and devotion. The chapter closes as Collie's hostility softens into playfulness, and she leads White Fang into the woods—answering an instinct deeper than law, custom, or even his love for the master—echoing the ancient mating run of his parents, Kiche and One Eye.
Character Development
White Fang undergoes his final transformation in this chapter. He learns three new modes of expression: laughing, romping, and barking—each representing a breakthrough in emotional communication. His single-hearted devotion to the master deepens, yet the chapter reveals that even this powerful bond cannot override the primal call of his species. White Fang's decision to follow Collie into the woods demonstrates that domestication has not erased his nature but exists alongside it.
Themes and Motifs
The chapter's title, "The Call of Kind," directly mirrors Jack London's The Call of the Wild, but inverts its meaning. Where Buck answers the call by abandoning civilization, White Fang answers it while remaining within civilization—his mating instinct is a natural completion of his domesticated life rather than a rejection of it. The nature-versus-nurture theme reaches its resolution: White Fang is shaped by love yet remains fundamentally wild, and these two identities coexist rather than conflict.
Literary Devices
London employs an extended simile comparing human kindness to sunlight nurturing a flower, establishing the chapter's pastoral tone. The motif of silence and speech runs throughout—White Fang's inability to bark, his "incommunicable something that strained for utterance," and his dramatic breakthrough into barking serve as metaphors for the emotional expression love unlocks. The circular structure of the final paragraph, linking White Fang and Collie's run to Kiche and One Eye's ancient courtship, provides thematic closure for the entire novel.