Jack London - The Call of the Wild (Puffin Classics)

PUFFIN

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First published 1903
First published in Puffin Books 1982
Reissued in this edition 2008
1

Illustrations copyright Martin Gascoigne 1982
Introduction copyright Melvin Burgess 2008
Endnotes copyright Penguin Books, 2008
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

9780141920535

First friend, the poet Rudyard Kipling called the dog. But I wonder just how friendly those dogs, fresh from the wild, really were? Thousands of years later, theyve become pets. If you have a dog these days, you never need be alone, and youre always the boss. But have you ever wondered what it would be like if your faithful, four-legged Fido came back at the head of the pack, with his lips curled back and a growl in his throat, and fresh meat on his mind? Would he sit and beg on command then?

No dog was ever so stern, loyal and obedient as Buck, and yet none so fierce and independent either. He starts off as a soft pet and then goes back in time, through being a working dog until, finally, he really is a guest in from the wilderness. There never was a dog like him, and probably never will be, either. None of mine would ever even do as they were told, let alone risk their lives for me. If I hadnt known how to operate the tin opener, theyd have been off. In the end, I think John Thornton, Bucks last owner, was simply lucky to have come across such a glorious beast. They were more a partnership than owner and dog, and in fact its Buck who is the stronger of the two. Thornton is just one more master keeping him from his true destiny, as pack leader of wild wolves, running with his wild brothers. Its only really when the last man is gone that Buck can truly become himself.

This is a romance about the wild places. In one sense, its the wilderness that is the true hero of the book. I think its that side of it that appeals to me the idea of a beautiful world with no people in it, unspoilt and perfect, where only the truly glorious can survive. It seems only right that Thornton was destroyed by the place he was trying to plunder, while Buck rises to the occasion by returning to the source of his strength and becoming a part of it.

These days we want to make our mark in the wilderness in a different way by managing it and making it suitable for wildlife, rather than just leaving it to be claimed by whatever and whoever can survive there. But for anyone, like myself, who loves nature, there is something magnetic in the idea that nature will come back to claim its own covering the towns with creepers and breaking up the roads and pavements with trees, pulling the houses back into the soil, while the animals we call pets knock down their fences and start to roam free again. The beautiful, dangerous wilderness! The Call of the Wild is a reminder of an age before mass extinctions, before climate change, when man had not yet become such a force of nature himself and there was a real sense that one day you might wake up and find that the roads have crumbled under the roots of trees, there would be wild beasts closing in on your garden, and first friend, sitting by the hearth, would turn and bare his teeth at you, just as his ancestors once used to do.

Old longings nomadic leap
Chafing at customs chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Millers place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half-hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool verandah that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbours, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Millers boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs. There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.