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Emily Daniels

Mann

AP Literature and Composition

10 March 2017

Tamed by the Wilderness

Humans often see themselves as superior to other beings. We created cultures that

gave rise to societies from the wilderness in which we were born, all due to our ability to reason

and think. With the power of intelligence in our hands, ironically enough, we overlook the other

perspective. Our species forgets where we came from, how we once struggled to stay alive like

all other forms of life. What if we never separated from our wild instincts? Jack London explores

this question in two of his novels: White Fang and The Call of the Wild. Both portray the main

character as a dog, the link between humanity and the wild. Both dogs interact with their

environments in different ways; White Fang lives in the Yukon wilderness before he is tamed and

taken to California, while Bucks life in Santa Clara ends with his kidnapping, making him turn

feral in the Klondike. In Londons The Call of the Wild, Buck recovers his innate instincts upon

his arrival to the Klondike; Bucks experience in both worlds shows that we are still connected to

our primitive selves, which shapes civilization without our knowing.

A sudden change in Bucks environment from sunny Santa Clara to the frozen

North forces him to depend on his innate instincts to survive. Snatched from his

lazy, orderly life, he experiences the Yukons harsh law when he takes his first steps

onto the unfamiliar tundra. He learns an unforgettable lesson in his new surroundings

when he witnesses the murder of his friend, a domesticated dog named Curly, who

attempts to befriend a group of huskies. Buck sees that he must throw away his
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civilized manners when there was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic

clip of teeth, and Curlys face was ripped open. They closed in upon her, snarling

and yelping, and she was buried, screaming in agony, beneath the bristling mass of

bodies (London 12-13). The culture of kill or be killed the phrase repeats in both

White Fang and The Call of the Wild several times is clear to Buck, which sets his primal

instincts to the forefront of his thoughts. Despite this animalistic passion, London

portrays Buck as more than a mere dog; he has human thoughts and emotions, with

full understanding that life in the Klondike was no fair play. Once down, that was the

end of it. Well, he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz ran out his tongue

and laughed and from that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless

hatred (London 13). Bucks primal senses not only lead him to survive as a sled dog in

the Yukon, but aid him in rising into leadership by killing Spitz, the alpha dog that he

loathed from the start. These instincts were not learned, but brought out of his unconscious.

He never felt the need to use them in California, so his intuition had to come from the lives of

his forebears; for he was a civilized dog and of his own experience knew no trap and so could

not of himself fear it (London 15). His change in environment was necessary to unearth his

genetic primal urges. Those who cannot find their wild selves in the Klondike are killed, which

leads to the fate of Hal and his family, civilized but unexperienced people when it came to

survival in the Klondike. Thornton, a wise gold seeker, warned them that the ice was too thin to

cross, but the family refused to listen, which lead to the sled team plummeting into the river.

Despite once being as clueless as Hal, Buck is the only survivor because of his instinctual refusal

to pull the sled, as he had made up his mind not to get up. he sensed disaster close at hand,

out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him (London 49). Bucks wild
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instincts continue to consume him as he lives in the wilderness with Thornton, and he is finally

set free when Yeehat Indians murder his master. Buck loved Thornton, but it was necessary to

sever his last tie to humanity so he could live as his true self: a wild animal. Buck is able to fully

merge with his primal self, molding into his surroundings.

Bucks acquisition of his feral side through experience in the Klondike leads to

the realization that the wilderness and civilization are one in the same. To survive in

the wild, Buck has to recover a set of laws from his unconscious, such the phrase kill

or be killed or how he knew his fight with Spitz was to the death. He seemed to

remember it all the white woods, the earth, the thrill of battle. The silent wolfish

circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down (London 29-30). These past

memories of his ancestors resurface in Bucks mind; the wilder he becomes, the more

that old memories were coming upon him fast. He had done this thing before,

somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again,

now, running free in the open (London 66). Buck is looking back on his ancestors,

finding instinct that lives in him despite generations of domestication. Bucks

thoughts suggest that humans have these ancestral memories as well, thinking back to

where the hairy man gathered shellfish and ate them as he gathered with legs

prepared to run like the wind. The man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck

(London 64). If the wild can tame a civilized dog like Buck, then we can assume that

our survival skills never leave us. Were fools to think that our species overcame our

instincts in fact, civilization is a fake construction of the wilderness, with procedures

that reflect the laws of survival. The motto kill or be killed applies to human
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society our search for power and money in groups, corporations or government is

the desire to be the alpha dog. The search for wealth, success, and family ties back to

the search for food, survival, and reproduction. Our original desire to survive reflects

our actions in our constructed cultures, but we deny our wild selves to the point of

repression. Civilization is a complicated version of the same system of rules that wild

animals abide by, created to keep our exceptional intelligence busy.

The Klondike transforms Buck from domesticated to wild, showing that our

primitive instincts exist in all forms of life, including humans. Its ironic that humanity

has put so much effort into separating from nature, only to find ourselves emulating it.

Our attempted separation is the cause of all the problems plaguing the environment;

were battling the earth rather than integrating ourselves into it. By bringing kill or be

killed into the modern world, we should expect to conform to the earths needs or

face extinction. If we can recognize our created cultures for what they are figments

of our imagination and transform them to work with the laws of the wild, then our

species will still have a chance to survive.