The Call of the Wild Book Report

Here is Kara's book report on The Call of the Wild by Jack London.  She saves her writing for 10:30 at night and it just pours out of her.  She didn't even really edit this.  I think she did great!

The Call of the Wild by Jack London is a book about a dog, torn from the hands of his owners and shoved into those of people who mistreat him, and how he must learn to survive in harsh environments. He’s attached to a sled with a few other dogs and must work until finding a chance at freedom, which he gleefully accepts. The dog, named Buck, joins a wolf pack and “answers the Call of the Wild.”

As soon as Buck was taken from his owners, he was beaten with a club until he submitted. Ever since then, he found that it was better to obey the harsh humans than disobey, and his persistent attitude gave him both rewards and punishments. Forced to pull a sled in the bitter cold, nearly starved to death, and exhausted is what Buck’s life looked like from then on.

Eventually, after thousands of miles of running, they came across the house of a man who recognized the pain that Buck and the other dogs were going through as actual pain—not just the laziness that Buck’s new owner, or tormenter, saw it as. The man, named John Thornton, challenged the one commanding Buck and, after a long argument, the man overworking the dogs gave Buck to John Thornton, saying that he didn’t need him. Almost immediately afterward, the other dogs and the brutal man went out across the ice and fell through into the freezing lake.

Some while later, Buck came back to John Thornton’s camp from a day-long trek in the woods, returning to his new master—to find that he had been attacked. Buck killed the ones who did it, but it was too late—John Thornton was dead. So Buck returned to the woods, where he eventually met a wolf, which led him to its pack. Buck was never again a slave to the humans, nor to wolves; he became the leader of the pack, and he lived on through part-wolf descendants.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London is an interesting book, and I enjoyed reading it—the only thing I didn’t like was how John Thornton died. Other than that, the book was exciting and captivating—how will Buck survive the next danger? The answer: he responds to the Call of the Wild.