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Call of the Wild, a la Shmoop: It's a Dog's Life.

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Let's talk about calls. . . No not the kind of call you get from your

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mother... Or even the kind of call you get from Mother

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Nature... Jack London writes about another call. . .

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. . .a powerful urge to get back to one's primitive

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state. Buck, the hero of our story, isn't some branch-eating

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survivalist. . .

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. . .and he's not a guy trying to make it in Hollywood.

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Yeah, this Buck isn't even a guy at all. . .he's a dog

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So, what gives? Why is this book about a canine instead of a human?

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Maybe London wanted to come up with an allegory about the true nature of man.

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And Buck and the gang were just stand-ins. The fact that they had human emotions. . .

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. . .might have been London's way of saying we're not all that different from animals.

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But maybe he used dogs for another reason. If London wanted to grab the readers' attention.

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. .

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. . .and get their sympathy. . .

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. . .putting puppies in peril was a sure-fire way to do it.

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C'mon, a defenseless dog stolen by ruthless humans. . .

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. . .and thrown into the frozen wilderness?

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Sounds like a bestseller to us.

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But maybe we're missing the obvious. Perhaps London used animals because it was

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a story about life in the wilderness.

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Maybe it was simply about putting a dog back in his natural habitat. . .

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. . .to see what he would do. So, why was Buck a dog?

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Was he an allegory for something else?

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A sympathy grabber...."oooh look... puppies..."

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Or was it to be taken at face value as a realistic tale?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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