Examples Of Darwinism In The Call Of The Wild

The Call of the Wild is a novel of transmutation in which the old Buck - the educated, moral Buck - must adapt to the rigid realities of life in the frosty North, where durability is the only imperative. Kill or be killed is the only virtue among the dogs of the Klondike, as Buck apprehends from the moment he steps off the boat and watches the murderous death of his friend Curly. The wilderness is a callous, uncaring world, where only the firm thrive. It is, as one might say, a perfect Darwinian world, and London’s depiction of it owes much to Charles Darwin, who advanced the conjecture of development to justify the improvement of life on earth and envisioned a natural world characterized by brutal competition for infrequent resources. The

In the Call of the Wild, Buck’s experience follows Darwinian principles. He is molded by the changes in his environment, thriving because he possesses the necessary genetic gifts of strength and intelligence to adapt to his mutable circumstances. He is an example of a popular understanding of Darwin’s theories: survival of the fittest. Although raised in the domestic ease of Judge Miller’s estate, Buck learns quickly what it takes to endure the brutal world of dog-sledding—the “law of club and fang.” When Buck first learns to steal food from one of his French-Canadian masters, readers are told that this “theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions.” The Call of the Wild also reflects London’s admiration for the works of nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In the North, might makes right, and Buck proves to be the animal equivalent of Nietzsche’s superman, possessing physical and mental abilities superior to those of the other

Inspired by Darwin, London believed in the evolutionary continuity between animals and human beings. If human beings evolved from animals, then what exists on a lower level in animals must hold true on a higher level for human beings. London does not give Buck human qualities but suggests that animals and humans share common traits and experiences because of their evolutionary connection. Buck’s vision of the short-legged, hairy man sleeping restlessly near the fire symbolizes the primitive beast lurking within all civilized beings. Being an animal, Buck can completely surrender to his primitive half. London seems to celebrate the primordial throughout the book, lauding the “surge of life” Buck experiences when he hunts down prey, the “ecstasy” of tasting living meat and warm blood. For human beings the rift between nature and civilization is much more complicated. People cannot and should not revert completely to their animalistic ancestry. In White Fang, for example, human beings dominated by their primitive halves are degenerates and criminals. London deals more directly with this human struggle in The Sea-Wolf (1904), suggesting that for humans a balance between the British and the civilized is