The Call of the Wild

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Call of the Wild is a 1903 novel by Jack London. The plot revolves around a dog named Buck and how his primal instincts return as he serves as a sled dog in the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush. It's usually considered his best novel, and he followed it with a Spiritual Successor called White Fang, a longer and even darker story about a wolf being domesticated and eventually sent to live in San Francisco. Because the protagonist is a dog, it is often mistaken for a kid's book. The dark tone and gritty violence make it decidedly not. The novel has had a lot of adaptations over the years, usually focusing on the human characters more than the dogs.

These adaptions include:

  • A 1935 version starring Clark Gable and Loretta Young.
  • The 1972 film starring Charles Heston and Mick Steele
  • An anime film adaptation in the 1980's by Toei Animation
  • A different anime adaptation called Anime Yasei no Sakebi (English Anime Cry of Wildness)
  • A 1997 adaptation, The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon starring Rutger Hauer, which was actually fairly faithful to the book.
  • A television series broadcast in 2000.
  • A family-friendly PG-rated film called Call of the Wild in Digital Real-D 3D, which failed at the box office
Tropes used in The Call of the Wild include: