KidLit Forum

“God! You can all but speak”

Setting: there is a clear mentioning of the setting (place and time) right in the first chapter: “Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley (…) in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from all over the world into the frozen North.”

Here are some reasons I consider the book worth reading:

The author’s artistic creed: “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame”

Poetry: “he was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”

Up to chapter IV. Who Has Won to Mastership there were scenes where dogs fought for food, leadersip and mastership; but in this chapter (that is by far the most impressive one) Dave fights for homour, pride and death can’t beat his nature of a sled dog.

Scene that resembles to the scene in White Fang when the wolf comes out from the forest and ‘lures ’dogs: “Buck did not attack, but circled him around and hedged him with friendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made three of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck’s shoulder. Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would run till Buck’s head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity. But in the end Buck;s pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding that no harm eas intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly, and played about in the nervous, hal-coy way with which fierce beasts belie their fierceness.”

Reasons for killing: “He killed to eat, not from wantonness”, “he had killed man, the noblest game of all ,and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. (…)It was harder to kill a husky dog than them”

Men are characterized by words that are used to animal descriptions: “Francois was a French –Canadian half -breed”; “A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates"

Also see the attachments : animal instinct 1, 2,3

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Monika Bandi