The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild was written by Jack London and published in 1903. Most of the novel takes place in the Yukon Territory, which is between Alaska and present-day Canada. The story takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush, shortly after gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896. Central characters include both dogs and humans. The dogs in the story do not speak like humans, but they all have other personality traits of humans. Buck, this dog is the “main character” of the novel, a huge, four-year-old half-Saint Bernard and half-Scottish shepherd dog. The story chronicles Buck’s various owners, each of which teaches him lessons of survival, eventually leading him to his ultimate destiny. The Call of the Wild, novel by Jack London, published serially by The Saturday Evening Post in 1903 and then as a single-volume book by Macmillan & Co. the same year. It is often considered to be his masterpiece and is the most widely read of all his publications.