Call of the Wild by Jack London

Buck is part St. Bernard and part Scotch Shepherd, with the size and strength of the former and grace and agility of the later — all characteristics that make him an ideal and desirable sled dog for those brave (or foolish) enough to trek hundreds of miles of unforgiving Yukon territory. From being stolen to being sold and forced into work and then sold again and ultimately rescued by man and by nature, Buck’s life as a dog is likely a whole lot different than the kind of life your own dog has lived. It’s one thing to imagine your dog casually meeting another on your walks, but it’s another thing to imagine your dog confronting an aggressive dog who hasn’t eaten much in days and is literally salivating to take your dog’s food away. And this is one of the more tame unpleasant experiences Buck had.

So if you love your dog as much as I love mine, then Jack London’s Call of the Wild is a very tough book to read. For the first few chapters, pretty much every single paragraph is more traumatic than the ending of Old Yeller. There are many incidents and descriptions of violence and brutality and cruelty inflicted by man to dog that is downright incomprehensible to anyone who has lovingly gazed into their dog’s eyes and have had them lovingly gaze back at you.

London’s narrative of abuse and inhumane treatment are absolutely unflinching, and nothing short of heartbreaking when you let your imagination go far enough to think about such treatment happening to dogs you’ve loved. It is hard for anyone who has a dog for a best friend to read these descriptions and not tear up. Maybe it’s my recency bias talking but even Cormac McCarthy wasn’t this straightforward in his depictions of violence. As difficult as it may be to get through many parts of this book, it is a work of genius in how devastatingly effective London’s complete lack of anthropomorphism works here.

Anthropomorphism and Call of the Wild

Humans treat animals and inanimate objects like people all the time. This is called anthropomorphism, and we’re all familiar with the behavior even if I only just now learned that there was a word to describe it. We cuddle stuffed toys as if they can cuddle us back, we yell at appliances as if that will coax them into doing what we need them to do, and we are nice to artificial intelligence as if they will remember how well we once treated them after the robot revolution comes.

And we definitely relate to our dogs as if they are as human as we are. We hug them and kiss them even though they do not quite understand the significance of such displays of affection between humans, and we have entire conversations with them as if they can intellectually understand and process what we tell them. 



You will find almost no such anthropomorphism in Call of the Wild, and there is very little dialogue in this book. That is its brilliance. Buck cannot speak for himself, and London certainly does not put words in Buck’s mouth. Rather, we can understand what Buck is feeling just from mere plainspoken narration of what happens to him and around him.

That Calling of Ancestral Memory

When Buck finally sheds his final shitty human masters and finds adoration at John Thornton’s camp, and performs several feats of strengths and heroics to cement his reputation as the best kind of dog of his kind, he is given true liberation to explore his true self. And this is the best part of the book.

Buck goes out at night on long walks that lasts for days, sniffing and exploring everywhere in the forest and one night, he follows the sound of a wolf howling. They meet, and after a bit of trepidation on both sides, they rub noses and befriend each other and it’s just as sweet and beautiful as your dog making a new friend at the park.

There’s also the section where Buck spots a whole herd of migrating moose, and his ancestral memory tells him to pick off the head moose in charge. The moose is many times bigger than Buck, whose head can barely reach his knee, and again, his ancestral memory tells him that he can beat the moose. Buck taunts and stalks the herd for days, separating the head moose from the rest of his family and succeeds in isolating him. When Buck succeeds in ending him, he spends another couple days feasting and napping around the moose’s massive carcass. It’s kinda the most formative week of Buck’s life, and it’s very compelling read to read.

As much as Buck endured the worst of humans — that terrible “club and fang” world — Buck was able to distance himself from humankind with his days-long nightly visits to the forest. And when he killed the men who had killed the only man who ever truly loved him, he severed his ever-growing tenuous ties to humankind and then there was no turning back.

Final Thoughts on Call of the Wild

We often call animal abuse dehumanizing, and it’s certainly not an inaccurate term. The worst of people are indeed somehow capable of treating animals as less than human, and we certainly see examples of these kind of humans in Call of the Wild. What makes this book so interesting is how London is able to separate our idea of what humanity is from the dog, and how the dehumanizing Buck experiences and endures ending up dehumanizing him so much that he learns how to tap into an ancestral memory, instincts, and desire still inside him that came from many many grandparents many many generations ago.

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Has Call of the Wild been made into a movie?

Yeah, a whole bunch of them! There have been at least nine (9) film and television adaptations of Jack London’s famous novel Call of the Wild that we can find, tho not all versions are readily available or easily accessible today.

The first Call of the Wild adaptation was made in 1923. It was a silent film written and directed by Fred Jackman and produced by Hal Roach, the guy who put together the has-not-aged-well Little Rascals. While prints of the film have been preserved at the Museum of Modern Art, we cannot find any home video or digital release.

Clarke Gable played John Thornton in the 1935 version of Call of the Wild that co-starred Loretta Young. It was produced by 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl Zanuk and directed by William A. Wellman, a veteran of early Hollywood that also made Wings, the very first Oscar recipient for Best Picture in 1927. Be careful if you wish the purchase this movie, as the original 92-minute version was cut down to 81 minutes for later theatrical release on TV and DVD, and the full version only exists on Blu-Ray.

In 1972, Charlton Heston also played John Thornton in Call of the Wild. According to his 1995 autobiography In The Arena, Charlton did not care for the movie very much and even told his readers not to watch it.

There was a made-for-TV version that aired on NBC in 1976 and starred John Beck. It was written by 18th United States Poet Laureate James Dickey, the guy who wrote the novel for Deliverance. It’s not clear to us if it was ever released on physical or digital media.

Interestingly, there was an anime version in 1981 titled Call of the Wild: Howl Buck that was directed by Kouzou Morishita. It’s in Japanese and seemingly pretty hard to track down on DVD.

Ricky Schroeder, that kid from the popular 1980s sitcom Silver Spoons starred in a 1993 version of Call of the Wild. As near as we can tell, it has not been released for home media, but you can view it on YouTube.

Rutger Hauer starred in a 1997 adaptation that was called The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon and narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.

There was another made-for-TV serial version of Call of the Wild in 2000 that was first aired on Animal Planet and ran for 13 episodes before being released on DVD in 2010. It starred Nick Mancusco as John Thornton, with an invented-for-the-adaptation stepson of John played by Shane Meier.

Most recently, Harrison Ford — Han Solo and Indiana Jones himself — starred in the 2020 adaptation of Call of the Wild, which utilized motion-capture technology to portray Buck. It was directed by Chris Sanders, the dude who also directed Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.

There are also films that are titled Call of the Wild and are loosely based on the classic book that even have Jack London credited as a writer, but take so many liberties that it wouldn’t be fair to call it an adaptation. This includes Call of the Wild (2009), which starred the legendary prolific Christopher Lloyd, as well as Ariel Gade and Aimee Teegarden, who were around 11 or 12 years old in a movie when there are no children in the book. Speaking of another version that contains children among the primary characters, London is also credited with being one of the writers of Call of the Wild (1996), an animated version where Buck befriends a young boy looking for gold to pay for his sister’s operation.

There is also a Call of the Wild 2! I wish I were kidding. It’s a sequel to the Animal Planet adaptation and the full title is Call of the Wild 2: Foxfire and Shane Meier reprises his role from the previous adaptation to continue his friendship with the dog.

Cover image by Harley D. Nygren via Wikimedia Commons.

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