The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild is a novel by Jack London, published in 1903. It is one of the most widely adapted American novels of its period, in print continuously and filmed many times.

The story is told from the position of the dog. Buck is a mixed-breed animal removed from a domestic life and put to work in harness, and the novel's method is to give the reader the sled route as an experience: the loads, the cold, the hierarchy of the team and the demands of the men who own it. The world of the gold rush arrives as a set of conditions rather than as a historical backdrop.

Running beside the survival narrative is the pull of the wild, which London presents as an inheritance Buck cannot entirely suppress. The wolves living near the trail are the visible form of it, and the book's ending is decided by which claim proves stronger. The novel is short, and its reputation rests on that single conflict rather than on the breadth of its incident, which is why it is still used as an introduction to London's Klondike material.