TITLE: Call of The Wild
AUTHOR & BACKGROUND: Jack Landon was the most successful writer in America in the early 20th Century. His best short stories are the Call of the Wild and White Fang. Mainly Landon wrote about animals, men and his stories were based off of life experiences. London lived his childhood in poverty in the Oakland slums. At the age of 17, he ventured to sea on a sealing ship. He changed his life when he was in a thirty-day imprisonment that was so degrading it made him decide to revolve his life around education and pursue a career in writing.
SETTING OF THE BOOK OR THEME OF THE STORY: The setting of the book is in the late 1890s and is in California, briefly; then Alaska and the Klondike region of Canada. Buck and his master Thornton travel all around throughout the book.
CHARACTERS:
NAMES/CHARACTER DESCRIPTION:
Buck: The main character; A powerful dog, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog, who is stolen from a California estate and sold as a sled dog in the Arctic. Buck goes from pampered to masterful and fierce and learns to kill-or-be-killed while in the North. He meets his master John Thornton, who shows him love and that is when he feels the wild calling him back to his roots.
John Thornton: Buck’s master, a gold hunter experienced in the ways of the Klondike. Thornton saves Buck from death and Buck rewards Thornton with fierce loyalty. They are the ideal man-dog relationship: each guards the other’s back and is completely devoted to only him. The strength of their bond is enough to keep Buck from his call of the wild.
Spitz: Buck’s rival dog; the original leader of Francois’s dog team. Spitz is a fierce animal—a “devil-dog,”—who is used to fight with other dogs and win. He meets his match in Buck. Spitz fights for survival with all of his might, disregarding what is right and wrong.
Hal: An American gold seeker, Hal comes to Canada his sister and her husband in search of adventure and riches. They