Home: Home Setting Main Character Theme Plot Summary Plot continues... Mood Conflict Prevalent Themes Personal Reflection About The Author The Call Of The Wild


The Call Of The Wild: The Call Of The Wild Author: Jack London


Setting: Setting The setting of this book takes place in 1897. The places that the main character is present are California Alaska and Canada. http://www.californiahistory.net/goldFrame-2.htm http://www.californiahistory.net/econ_frame_main.htm Back http://www.akhistorycourse.org/timelines/1867.php http://timelines.ws/1887_1890.HTML http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/historical/territorialevolution/1897/1


Main Character : Main Character The name of the main character is a golden retriever Buck. Buck used to live with his owner in California. Men in Canada needed strong, fast dogs in order to pull the sledge in the snow. Buck was sold by his owner and turned into one of the best dogs ever. He changed owners from good to bad until he met Thornton. Thornton was Bucks favorite owner and he loved him the most. The dog saved Thornton’s life twice in and extraordinary matter. But in the end Buck gets sucked into the wildlife by his ancestors the wolves.


Theme: Theme The theme of this book is that Buck has to learn new skills to survive. He has to develop new abilities to help adopt on his way to a new, better life. His skills include: finding food, fighting with other dogs and pulling a sledge.


Plot Summary: In summary this book is about a dog that goes trough a fantastic life where he meets a lot of new friends and foes. Buck was stolen from his home in the south and sold as a sledge dog. He had to learn a new way of life – how to work in a harness, how to stay alive in ice and how to fight. His first owner was named Mr. Miller and he lived in Santa Clara in California. At home in California , Buck had an easy, comfortable life. He was the biggest, strongest, most important dog around that area. He went walking and swimming with the children, and sat by his owner’s fire in the winter. His second owners were Francois and Perrault. They knew everything about dogs. They were fair, calm and honest men. Those men introduced Buck to a new cold climate and his first snow. It was a huge step in life for Buck. Buck learned everything important from his second owners. Francois and Perrault sold Buck since they found what they were seeking for – the gold of Alaska. He was made the leader dog of his companion sledge dogs. Even tough he was the leader his whole group was sold because their owners accomplished their goals. His third owners were Charles, Hal and Mercedes. These people didn’t know much about dogs and they forced the dogs to pull more than they were able to. They went out a journey to get back to America. Halfway through their journey, they begin to run out of food.. While the humans bicker, the dogs begin to starve, and the weaker animals soon die. Of an original team of fourteen, only five are still alive when they limp into John Thornton’s camp, still some distance from their destination. Thornton warns them that the ice over which they are traveling is melting and that they may fall through it. Hal dismisses these warnings and tries to get going immediately. The other dogs begin to move, but Buck refuses. When Hal begins to beat him, Plot Summary


Slide7: Thornton intervenes, knocking a knife from Hal’s hand and cutting Buck loose. Hal curses Thornton and starts the sled again, but before they have gone a quarter of a mile, the ice breaks open, swallowing both the humans and the dogs. Thornton becomes Buck’s master, and Buck’s devotion to him is total. He saves Thornton from drowning in a river, attacks a man who tries to start a fight with Thornton in a bar, and, most remarkably, wins a $1,600 wager for his new master by pulling a sled carrying a thousand-pound load. But Buck’s love for Thornton is mixed with a growing attraction to the wild, and he feels as if he is being called away from civilization and into the wilderness. This feeling grows stronger when he accompanies Thornton and his friends in search of a lost mine hidden deep in the Canadian forest. While the men search for gold, Buck ranges far afield, befriending wolves and hunting bears and moose. He always returns to Thornton in the end, until, one day, he comes back to camp to find that Yeehat Indians have attacked and killed his master. Buck attacks the Indians, killing several and scattering the rest, and then heads off into the wild, where he becomes the leader of a pack of wolves. He becomes a legendary figure, a Ghost Dog, fathering countless cubs and inspiring fear in the Yeehats—but every year he returns to the place where Thornton died, to mourn his master before returning to his life in the wild.


Mood: Mood The moods of this book are: Sweeping, romantic and heroic


Conflict : Conflict The conflict is that Buck wants to stay with his master but his ancestors are calling for him.


Prevalent Themes: Prevalent Themes The laws of civilization and of wilderness; the membership of the individual in the group; the power of instinct and ancestral memory; the struggle for mastery


Personal Reflection: Personal Reflection My personal reflection of this book is that this book is a positive reflection. I enjoyed reading this book because its plot was very easy to follow. Its points made sense in a way which got me to read this book. The book was very easy to follow and it made me satisfied when I as done reading it. I would recommend this book on those long rides in the car when you’re sick of listening to your mp3 player. There is not a lot of hard vocabulary in this ,therefore everybody can understand what is going on. I have learned from this summer reading project that it takes a lot of time to make a good website. It also thought that you have to fight your way trough life just as Buck did. Life changes in a moment s you better not hold onto something too hard because you might lose it in second. Presenting something via fighting is not a good idea when you are all by yourself with no friends. Its always good to have couple friends with you in case something bad is about to happen. If they good friends they will back you up in any case.


About The Author: About The Author Jack London, whose life symbolized the power of will, was the most successful writer in America in the early 20th Century. His vigorous stories of men and animals against the environment, and survival against hardships were drawn mainly from his own experience. An illegitimate child, London passed his childhood in poverty in the Oakland slums. At the age of 17, he ventured to sea on a sealing ship. The turning point of his life was a thirty-day imprisonment that was so degrading it made him decide to turn to education and pursue a career in writing. His years in the Klondike searching for gold left their mark in his best short stories; among them, The Call of the Wild, and White Fang. His best novel, The Sea-Wolf, was based on his experiences at sea. His work embraced the concepts of unconfined individualism and Darwinism in its exploration of the laws of nature. He retired to his ranch near Sonoma, where he died at age 40 of various diseases and drug treatments. Jack London (John Griffith) (1876-1916) www.jacklondon.com