The book The Call of the Wild by Jack London is the story of a dog named Buck. Buck is kidnapped and sold as a sled dog, and encounters many different kinds of people in his life, some good some bad. Throughout the book, one can see how each of these people has an effect on how Buck's actions and the way he thinks, suggesting that animals could have feelings and instincts very much like humans.
Buck begins living with Judge Miller and his family in the Santa Clara Valley in 1897. Buck is a civilized dog, and trusts that the humans around him always know best, and that it is best to trust them no matter what. That is, until he is kidnapped and sold by Manuel; one of the gardener's assistants.
Buck is forced into a much different world from the Judge's estate when he is sold by Manuel. In order to ensure that Buck does not get loose and cause problems, Manuel creates a sort of noose which is used as a leash, so that when Buck tries to escape, he is choked until he blacks out, and the feeling of entrapment makes him furious. While being sent via a train to Seattle, Bucks attitude makes a complete change:.
"For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle." (London, 6).
He also comes in contact with a family of a man and his sister and her husband on their way to Dawson, who treats him and what is left of his team very poorly, causing many of his fellow dogs to go mad.
The last owner that Buck comes into contact with is a man named John Thornton, who rescues him from the family on their way to Dawson. Thornton shows Buck a love that he has never known before:.
