I missed out on reading The Call of the Wild by Jack London with everyone else in the eighth grade because I was in an advanced class that replaced the literature requirement. (I also missed out on Lord of the Flies and The Outsiders). So when I signed up for Sarah's Back to the Classics Challenge, I knew I had to choose this for my young adult/children's classic.The story chronicles the adventures of Buck, a big friendly dog used to spending his days running outside with his family. However, one day Buck is surreptitiously sold off to Alaska to pay a hired man's gambling debts. Once Buck is immersed in the wild, he slowly begins to recall his ancient role in the wild and begins to feel the call (get it?) to return to nature.
In recent years, I have acquired a distaste for animal books. More specifically, I don't love animal books that are trying to be realistic, or in other words, books where the animal is thinking or hoping or acting like a mute human. I do not deny that I loved Brian Jacques Redwall series and a few similar books growing up, but they were pure fantasy. The Call of the Wild is trying to tell us a realistic story from a dog's point of view, and that doesn't generally work for me. So I was feeling a bit sarcastic about the book from the beginning.
It was better than I expected. The writing was gorgeous. The descriptions of the stark Alaskan wilderness have a cold, alien beauty. London's descriptions of Buck's communion with "the call of the wild" are intriguing and lovely -
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. [...] He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.Not bad. And I did find the story interesting. I didn't connect with it that much, but it was well-executed and vaguely interesting. I probably won't read White Fang, but I enjoyed the little trip to the wilds.
Accessibility/readability - Quite.
Aesthetics/literary merit - 4
Plot - 3.5
Characters - 3
Personal response - 3
Overall: 3.5
