Dogs and humans share similar qualities after being domesticated. Domesticated dogs originate from wolves, their ancestor. The Call of the Wild by Jack London is about a dog named Buck who is taken off to the Klondike to be used for a dog sled pack. The narrator throughout the book suggested that Buck would have ultimately rejected civilization and followed his nature. The novel stands on tension being revealed as nature winning rather than civilization, only Thornton is the last tie to that world.
Jack London exposes the dog Buck as a Santa Clara valley dog free to roam the fields and go inside the Judge’s house. In his world he was king, which also foreshadows his later desire and impulse to be pack leader of the trail team. He is dognapped from his home by the gardener, taken to Alaska by a man in a red sweater who beat him with a club which is where Buck learns about the law of club. In the beginning of the book, it is said that Buck was around dogs and humans who were savages and that Buck had an “imperative need to be constantly alert” (London 14). This suggests that Buck sooner or later was going to have to be savage like the others if he were going to play their game to survive.
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Even though this book was written before television times, a common scene of cavemen is of them next to the fire. Cavemen are the primordial form of humans before civilization took place. This hairy man is a symbol of Buck’s future turn to the wilderness since he was there when Buck’s ancestors lived. The tension between Nature and Civilization is revealed when “the dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew” (London