Buck's Transformation In The Call Of The Wild

Imagine being taken from a luxurious home where you are treated like royalty into the middle of the wilderness, where you are forced to work long, hard hours, with no reward but surviving until the next day, where you will only do more of the same. The idea of living like this seems almost impossible. To survive, you would have to fundamentally change who you are. Yet this is the exact scenario that Buck, the main character, is placed into. In Jack London’s novel The Call of the Wild, Buck changes throughout the story and becomes more wild, confident, and strong. For many people it is truly a struggle to change. But for Buck, changing and becoming wild is his only way to survive.

At the beginning of the book, Buck is understandably …show more content…
Through his time with John Thornton, Buck developed a very close relationship with him. Thornton changed Buck’s life, and Buck challenged himself to do anything for him. But after John Thornton is killed, Buck loses all ties to humanity. He is ready to be a wild dog, and he finally can be. On page 102 it says, “From far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps...It was the call, the many noted call, sounding more longingly than ever before. And as, never before, he was ready to obey...Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.” This example showcases how wild Buck now is. The call of the wild had been getting stronger in Buck, but his love for John Thornton had kept him away from his forest brothers. But now that Thornton was gone, Buck could finally be wild, and truly free. He had gone from struggling to do simple things in the wild like sleeping in the snow, to being a full fledged wild dog throughout the course of the …show more content…
He goes from being out of place and needing help in his new environment, to beginning to feel the tug of the wild, and finally cutting ties with the human world and truly becoming wild. Buck’s changes as a character are not just important to the book. In life, a lot of people struggle with change and try to keep everything the same. But avoiding change is impossible, and it is sometimes necessary to change, as Buck shows. If Buck had not evolved and changed, he would never have survived. Buck sets an example of it being okay to change. Buck’s incredible journey in The Call of The Wild was not just physical, but Buck has changed into a dog almost unrecognizable from the Buck met by readers at the beginning of the book. Buck has to change to survive, and ultimately, he changes for the