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John Griffith London, the illegitimate son of Professor of Astrology father and an emotionally distant mother, was born January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. Jack spent much of his childhood working odd jobs to help support his family. After living abroad on a seal-hunting ship and trading across much of the United States, Jack briefly attended the University of California at Berkeley. When news of the gold rush in the Yukon reached him, he packed his bags and left California with thousands of other prospectors to test his luck in the frozen north. After spending the winter and the spring of 1898 in the Yukon, London had not found an ounce of gold and was suffering from scurvy, a disease brought about by lack of good foods.
Realizing he was beaten, London returned to California without gold, but with a wealth of experiences and impressions from the Klondike that would soon be portrait in the stories and novels for which he became famous. The most successful of these Klondike tales is The Call of the Wild, a novel that propelled London to the forefront of American fiction. Buck's struggles in The Call of the Wild mirror London's own difficulties in finding a compromise between his drastically contrasting belief systems. The gold rush created a need for a reliable, weatherproof transportation system in the Klondike, a need that could be met by only one available resource: dogs. As a result, dogs became a nesesaty with winter transportation between 1897 and 1900, and proved useful in the summer too. Dogs hauled equipment, delivered mail, and labored in the mines themselves.
During the summers, the dogs were used as pack animals; during the winters they pulled sleds. By 1899 there were approximately four thousand dogs in the mining town of Dawson. Most of the animals were privately owned, but transportation companies owned some as well. During the summer months gold was brought into Dawson from the mines by dog trains consisting of fifteen to twenty dogs, each carrying a thirty-pound pack.
A fifteen-dog train could haul $ 122, 400 worth of gold. During the summer, the dog trains operated twenty-four hours a day, six days a week. During the winter, dog punchers, as the drivers of the dog teams were called, worked eight hours a day, averaging twenty miles with a load of twelve hundred pounds. Various breeds of dog were used for freighting in the Yukon. The most sought-after were the native breeds the husky, the malamute, and the Siwash, or Indian dog. Though they were often bad-tempered, giving rise to vicious dog fights, these native dogs were well suited to the task and to the environment, being strong in the back and legs as well as having thick outer and inner coats of hair, and paws that were well furred between the pads and toes.
Native dogs also showed an incredible talent for scavenging, a skill that was crucial for survival in the frozen Yukon. During the gold rush, however, the importing of non-native dogs for sale became a brisk business. In fact, the number of outside dogs far exceeded the number of native breeds in use at this time. These outside dogs did not have the strength and adaptability of the native dogs, but some, like the St. Bernard and the mastiff, were unsurpassed at short-distance hauling. On the trail, dogs were fed dried salmon, each dog receiving two pounds of fish each day.
They were fed once a day, and always at night. This was done to encourage them to make better time on the trail, as dogs tended to become lazy after feeding. Under optimum conditions, a team of five native dogs could pull a sled with a 1, 000 -pound load a distance of fifteen to twenty-five miles in a single day. Generally, the sled was loaded at the ratio of 160 pounds to each dog. With their heavy fur, over-sweating was a constant problem when dogs pulled heavy loads. To remedy this condition, the driver stopped frequently and let the dogs cool off by rolling in the snow.
Another problem the dogs faced was injury from ice crystals forming between the pads of their feet. When a driver saw a dog limping, he would stop and thaw the pads by putting them in his mouth and drying them with a cloth. In The Call of the Wild, when Buck's feet are injured by the cold and roughness of the ice, he is given small moccasins to keep his feet warm. Buck, a massive dog, half Saint Bernard, half Scotch shepherd, leads a life of luxury on Judge Miller's ranch in the Santa Clara Valley in California. Because of the current gold rush in the Yukon territory, strong dogs have become a premium commodity.
Manuel, the gardener's helper, kidnaps Buck and sells him to dog traders. Along his journey, Buck adapts quickly to the law of club and fang, realizing that his animal strength is no match for the brutality of his human trainers. Two French-Canadian government couriers, Perrault and Francis, eventually buy Buck and take him into the Yukon as a sled dog. Buck learns that to survive the harsh conditions and the savagery of the dog-pack, he must be cunning and ruthless. His civilized morals disappear, as survival becomes the driving force of his existence.
Buck comes into conflict with Spitz, another dog on the team. When the two dogs fight to the death, Buck triumphs, leaving the mortally wounded Spitz to be devoured by the raging dog pack. In the wild conditions, Buck begins to dream of an ancient past and senses the primal call of the wild, urging him to throw off all vestiges of civilization and revel in pure animal savagery. Buck is traded to another team, this one pulling a mail sled for the postal service. After several exhausting months of this, he is sold to an inexperienced trio of prospectors, Hal, Charles, and Mercedes. First they feed the dogs too much, and then as the food runs out on their long journey, they feed them too little.
Mercedes adds to the exhaustion of the dogs by riding on the sleigh. When the dogs stop pulling because of complete fatigue, Hal whips them mercilessly. John Thornton, a prospector camped nearby, stops Hal and takes Buck away from the inept threesome. Hal, Charles, and Mercedes move on, only to be killed when the ice gives way behind them, pulling humans, dogs, and sled into a yawning hole. For the first time, Buck has in Thornton a master he can love. Buck proves this love on several occasions.
In two circumstances he saves Thornton's life, once by attack...
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