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Emily Daniels
Mann
10 March 2017
Humans often see themselves as superior to other beings. We created cultures that
gave rise to societies from the wilderness in which we were born, all due to our ability to reason
and think. With the power of intelligence in our hands, ironically enough, we overlook the other
perspective. Our species forgets where we came from, how we once struggled to stay alive like
all other forms of life. What if we never separated from our wild instincts? Jack London explores
this question in two of his novels: White Fang and The Call of the Wild. Both portray the main
character as a dog, the link between humanity and the wild. Both dogs interact with their
environments in different ways; White Fang lives in the Yukon wilderness before he is tamed and
taken to California, while Bucks life in Santa Clara ends with his kidnapping, making him turn
feral in the Klondike. In Londons The Call of the Wild, Buck recovers his innate instincts upon
his arrival to the Klondike; Bucks experience in both worlds shows that we are still connected to
A sudden change in Bucks environment from sunny Santa Clara to the frozen
North forces him to depend on his innate instincts to survive. Snatched from his
lazy, orderly life, he experiences the Yukons harsh law when he takes his first steps
onto the unfamiliar tundra. He learns an unforgettable lesson in his new surroundings
when he witnesses the murder of his friend, a domesticated dog named Curly, who
attempts to befriend a group of huskies. Buck sees that he must throw away his
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civilized manners when there was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic
clip of teeth, and Curlys face was ripped open. They closed in upon her, snarling
and yelping, and she was buried, screaming in agony, beneath the bristling mass of
bodies (London 12-13). The culture of kill or be killed the phrase repeats in both
White Fang and The Call of the Wild several times is clear to Buck, which sets his primal
instincts to the forefront of his thoughts. Despite this animalistic passion, London
portrays Buck as more than a mere dog; he has human thoughts and emotions, with
full understanding that life in the Klondike was no fair play. Once down, that was the
end of it. Well, he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz ran out his tongue
and laughed and from that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless
hatred (London 13). Bucks primal senses not only lead him to survive as a sled dog in
the Yukon, but aid him in rising into leadership by killing Spitz, the alpha dog that he
loathed from the start. These instincts were not learned, but brought out of his unconscious.
He never felt the need to use them in California, so his intuition had to come from the lives of
his forebears; for he was a civilized dog and of his own experience knew no trap and so could
not of himself fear it (London 15). His change in environment was necessary to unearth his
genetic primal urges. Those who cannot find their wild selves in the Klondike are killed, which
leads to the fate of Hal and his family, civilized but unexperienced people when it came to
survival in the Klondike. Thornton, a wise gold seeker, warned them that the ice was too thin to
cross, but the family refused to listen, which lead to the sled team plummeting into the river.
Despite once being as clueless as Hal, Buck is the only survivor because of his instinctual refusal
to pull the sled, as he had made up his mind not to get up. he sensed disaster close at hand,
out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him (London 49). Bucks wild
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instincts continue to consume him as he lives in the wilderness with Thornton, and he is finally
set free when Yeehat Indians murder his master. Buck loved Thornton, but it was necessary to
sever his last tie to humanity so he could live as his true self: a wild animal. Buck is able to fully
Bucks acquisition of his feral side through experience in the Klondike leads to
the realization that the wilderness and civilization are one in the same. To survive in
the wild, Buck has to recover a set of laws from his unconscious, such the phrase kill
or be killed or how he knew his fight with Spitz was to the death. He seemed to
remember it all the white woods, the earth, the thrill of battle. The silent wolfish
circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down (London 29-30). These past
memories of his ancestors resurface in Bucks mind; the wilder he becomes, the more
that old memories were coming upon him fast. He had done this thing before,
somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again,
now, running free in the open (London 66). Buck is looking back on his ancestors,
thoughts suggest that humans have these ancestral memories as well, thinking back to
where the hairy man gathered shellfish and ate them as he gathered with legs
prepared to run like the wind. The man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck
(London 64). If the wild can tame a civilized dog like Buck, then we can assume that
our survival skills never leave us. Were fools to think that our species overcame our
that reflect the laws of survival. The motto kill or be killed applies to human
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society our search for power and money in groups, corporations or government is
the desire to be the alpha dog. The search for wealth, success, and family ties back to
the search for food, survival, and reproduction. Our original desire to survive reflects
our actions in our constructed cultures, but we deny our wild selves to the point of
repression. Civilization is a complicated version of the same system of rules that wild
The Klondike transforms Buck from domesticated to wild, showing that our
primitive instincts exist in all forms of life, including humans. Its ironic that humanity
has put so much effort into separating from nature, only to find ourselves emulating it.
Our attempted separation is the cause of all the problems plaguing the environment;
were battling the earth rather than integrating ourselves into it. By bringing kill or be
killed into the modern world, we should expect to conform to the earths needs or
face extinction. If we can recognize our created cultures for what they are figments
of our imagination and transform them to work with the laws of the wild, then our