Ficha #2 (3rd trim)

Opinion paragraph
As the story unfolds, we will witness the profound transformation of Buck, from a well-
cared domestic dog to a wild spirit animal. The structure of the story is very similar to that
of White Fang, in both the animal is torn from its natural environment and is forced to
learn about other facets of life, mainly dominated by humans. One thing I really like about
this book is that London plays with the "Super dog" idea about Buck, he's the strongest,
the smartest, the most cunning, and a long list of "pluses." At first this idea did not appeal
to me very much, but then I realized that if Buck were not a Super dog he would have
perished in the first adverse conditions and we would have been left with a history of few
pages. The writer also captures the memory of the species, in which an individual not only
has his memories, but that of all his ancestors. This is not a clear and crisp memory but
comes, in this case, to Buck when he is drowsy or is carried away by his most primal
instincts. Finally the statement "the strongest survives" is repeated continuously in
history.

Abstract
Yet in the fall of 1894, once the discovery of the Klondike goldfields dragged men from
every part of the globe to the ice of Alaska, Buck was productively sold and shipped north.
No longer caressed or respected, in a wild and hostile territory, is he forced to bow to the
primordial law of the cane and the whip, to tolerate the harness and to pull the sled of the
government correspondence of Canada. His muscles are made hard as iron, the
fundamental instinct of the old generations is awakened in him, and his cry becomes "the
inarticulate voice of the battle for life."
His story becomes even sadder once he passes, with his pack, in the service of 3
quarrelsome and incapable gold prospectors who, novelly moved to the journey, come up
against the rigid reality of the arctic track. Buck reluctantly follows them, full of sad
forebodings: the 3 end up perishing, with the other dogs, in a cleft; Buck, by chance, is
saved by Thornton, who from that moment becomes, by a kind of mysterious and
intimate understanding, his friend, his love, his god.
Buck's excitement for his master is pure adoration: twice he saves his life, and makes him
a $ 1,600 reward by dragging a thousand-pound sled for 100 yards. However, throughout
the long pilgrimages in which he follows Thornton in search of an abandoned mine, Buck
feels the atavistic instinct that drives him to run to the jungle, to approach the wolf,
reborn in himself, more and more intense. "His wild brother". Only love for his master
preserves him among men; and once Thornton is slain by a gang of Indians, he runs to the
side of his savage brethren, singing with his howl the tune of the primitive days of the
whole world.

The Call of the Wild is Jack London's first novel, and in it he exposes his faith in biological
evolutionism and in the omnipotence of the environment; despite the thesis, the work is
entirely alive: Buck is alive, the other dogs are alive, with their heroism, their ferocity and
their ambitions. He should not be surprised that in the America of his book stage he
achieved a great triumph, calling on industrialized and mechanized men to the acrid
savage fragrance of instinct and the fundamental reality of nature and life.