The Call of the Wild

Buck hears the call of the wild repeatedly throughout the novel. In the early chapters, he first hears the call from the wild dogs of the North. Buck is still a Southland dog, but he’s lured in by the howling and joins in: “Every night, regularly at night, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join” (16). Buck doesn’t fully grasp what the call is, but he finds himself wanting to embrace it. His answering of the call parallels his journey of personal growth, becoming a sonic representation of his story arc; the more Buck moves toward the call, the more he abandons his Southland identity and embraces a Northern one. London continues to employ the call throughout the entire story and enhances it with physical manifestations. The longer Buck stays in the North, the more he dreams of an ancient time, when men were primal versions of themselves and the world was young. Buck hears the call in these dreams, and it pulls him into that lost time: “And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest.