The Call of the Wild

Jack London’s novel of Buck, a big, pampered dog stolen from a California estate and sold as a sled dog in the Klondike gold rush, where he must learn the law of club and fang.

Start reading7 chapters, about 32,000 words

Famous quotes

• 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.

  Chapter IIn context

  • Animals

• He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken.

  Chapter IIn context

  • Character
  • Courage

• 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.

  Chapter IIIIn context

  • Happiness
  • Life & Death

• He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

  Chapter VIIn context

  • Nature
  • Power

• When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.

  Chapter VIIIn context

  • Animals
  • Nature

Contents

1. Chapter IInto the Primitive
2. Chapter IIThe Law of Club and Fang
3. Chapter IIIThe Dominant Primordial Beast
4. Chapter IVWho Has Won to Mastership
5. Chapter VThe Toil of Trace and Trail
6. Chapter VIFor the Love of a Man
7. Chapter VIIThe Sounding of the Call