The Call of the Wild

I have forgotten the last time I read a book so beautiful. It's a cliché adjective, but it is appropriate.

Call of the Wild is a short novel set in the 1890s during the Klondike Gold Rush. Since it involved climbing through a lot of snow, people needed dogs, for transportation of goods as well as themselves. Dogs that were sold, abducted and stolen were subjected to months of toil and cruelty. And one of those poor souls was the main character of the story, Buck.

I have no particular liking or dislike for animals. I don't mind them being around me, but I don't go around petting them. I expected this to be a story heavily revolving around the dog's perspective and picked up this book just to see how this guy could fill so many pages, with the story of a dog; the content was bound to get repetitive. This is one of the books, I thought I wouldn't like, but ended up loving. It is very unusual.

The author often went outside the perspective of the dog - you wouldn't realize the pages turning, and there's a certain freshness and energy to the story throughout.

After the sudden change of circumstances in Buck's life, in the first chapter which heralds the transformation of a pampered pet into a beast; there is a disillusionment - and the new reality filled with a chain of transient, cruel, owners(with clubs as a means of ‘discipline') teaches him the ‘law of club and fang'.

The first part of his journey is about survival. The second part is his life with his final and favorite owner.
*The third and final is the Call of the Wild.

If I start describing them, the review might end up longer than the book. I'd rather point out two aspects of the book I especially liked.

1. The author is a master in setting a scene.
This is when Buck is in a fight with Spitz, another dog.
“Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circle[other dogs watching the fight] waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for footing. Once Buck went over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started up; but he recovered himself almost in mid air, and the circle sank down again and waited.”
This brings to my mind the boxing scenes from movies like Raging Bull and Million Dollar Baby. The imagery is so sharp, almost movie-like.
2. The ‘Call' has both figurative and literal meaning.
There is a recurring theme of the transformation of Buck being explained to be due to the Call of the Wild. This figurative ‘call' is the call of his ancestors.
“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap[ don't you hear the crunch!?] In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him.”

The language is simple and beautiful. The novel is short and sweet. The prose is poetic.

“Never was there such a dog.. .....when he was made the mould was broke.”

The whole book is filled with descriptions of Buck, which would leave any reader in awe of this exceptional creature.

Worth multiple reads.