Aaron Vigna

Buck, the dog.

Buck is a powerful strong dog, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog. He was living on Judge Miller’s estate in California. He lives a comfortable life there, but it soon ends when gold had been discovered in Canada and there is a great demand for strong dogs to pull sleds. A gardener comes and kidnapped, rather, dognapped
Buck and sold him to dog traders, who brutally teach Buck to obey, using clubs and then they had shipped him north to the klondike region.

Once he arrived in the North, Buck had been amazed by the extreme cruelty surrounding him. When another dog the ship he was on, Curly, gets off the boat and a pack of huskies violently attacks her and kills her. Seeing that, Buck vows to himself to never let the same fate fall on him. He begins to adjust life as a sled do.
He learns to adapt to his surroundings and learns to scavenge for food, and sleep beneath snow on winter nights. He begins a fight with Spitz, a lead dog in a team of sled dogs. Buck won the fight by killing him and takes over as lead dog.

Buck is moved around from different owners and different situations. As men are searching for the gold, Buck separates himself from the team to get away, always returning in the end until one day, he comes back to camp and finds the
Yeehat Indians attacking and killing his master. He attacks the Indians, killing several and scaring the rest away. Buck then runs into the wild where he finds the leader of a pack of wolves. He becomes an idol dog, inspiring fear in the indians.
But every year he returns to where his leader was killed. He is free to run in the wild, as long as he is a leader, but he still morns over the death of his leader.

The Call of the Wild is a great work of literature. It is written in a style that at one point, is strong and meaningful and then, well boring. As Buck slowly gos back to his wolf-like instincts, he becomes more alive and aware. He becomes more true to himself and learns to adapt to his environment easier.