The Call of the Wild (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jack London
- First Published: 1903
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Adventure
- Subjects: Values, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Dogs, Nature, Nineteenth century, Death or dying, Good and evil, Human behavior, Adventure, Ice, Alaska, Arctic, Wolves, Yukon, Gold mines or mining, Prospecting or prospectors, Wildlife, Snow
- Locales: Yukon Territory, Canada
The Call of the Wild was London's first success, and it represented an imaginative recasting of strands of thought from Darwinism and literary naturalism. The general concept of the book is a clever play on themes generated by attacks on the theory of evolution. Religious writers ridiculed the evolutionists’ idea that humans were the descendants of prehistoric apes and poured scorn on the concept that a being with a godlike soul shared traits with other members of the animal kingdom. Thinkers of this ilk lambasted writers such as Frank Norris, who in McTeague showed...
[The entire page is 1102 words long]
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