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Early 20th-Century American Literature Videos 30 videos
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A cheap shot at a bestseller or a deeper book with connections relevant to the human race? In The Call of the Wild, the protagonist is a dog named...
The Call of the Wild 9787 Views
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A cheap shot at a bestseller or a deeper book with connections relevant to the human race? In The Call of the Wild , the protagonist is a dog named Buck, who's thrown into the wilderness and forced to survive on his own. But this dog has human-esque emotions that help the reader empathize with him.
Transcript
- 00:00
Call of the Wild, a la Shmoop: It's a Dog's Life.
- 00:08
Let's talk about calls. . . No not the kind of call you get from your
- 00:11
mother... Or even the kind of call you get from Mother
- 00:14
Nature... Jack London writes about another call. . .
- 00:18
. . .a powerful urge to get back to one's primitive
Full Transcript
- 00:21
state. Buck, the hero of our story, isn't some branch-eating
- 00:27
survivalist. . .
- 00:27
. . .and he's not a guy trying to make it in Hollywood.
- 00:30
Yeah, this Buck isn't even a guy at all. . .he's a dog
- 00:33
So, what gives? Why is this book about a canine instead of a human?
- 00:42
Maybe London wanted to come up with an allegory about the true nature of man.
- 00:45
And Buck and the gang were just stand-ins. The fact that they had human emotions. . .
- 00:50
. . .might have been London's way of saying we're not all that different from animals.
- 00:55
But maybe he used dogs for another reason. If London wanted to grab the readers' attention.
- 01:00
. .
- 01:00
. . .and get their sympathy. . .
- 01:01
. . .putting puppies in peril was a sure-fire way to do it.
- 01:05
C'mon, a defenseless dog stolen by ruthless humans. . .
- 01:08
. . .and thrown into the frozen wilderness?
- 01:11
Sounds like a bestseller to us.
- 01:12
But maybe we're missing the obvious. Perhaps London used animals because it was
- 01:16
a story about life in the wilderness.
- 01:20
Maybe it was simply about putting a dog back in his natural habitat. . .
- 01:23
. . .to see what he would do. So, why was Buck a dog?
- 01:30
Was he an allegory for something else?
- 01:32
A sympathy grabber...."oooh look... puppies..."
- 01:34
Or was it to be taken at face value as a realistic tale?
- 01:38
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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