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The Call Of The Wild Call Essay

Decent Essays

It is obvious that the human characters, to some extent, no longer, dominate the canine character, Buck, because the human univocal oppressive voice cannot withstand the attack of the canine heterogeneous discourse. The other aspect of this encounter is characterised by a sense of understanding and respect between man and animal. The characters of Judge Miller and John Thornton and their connections to Buck suggest that the barriers between man and animal can diminish. The canine voice and the human one intermingle amazingly in a way that neither of which can claim superiority or mastery over the other. At the end of the novella, Buck’s voice becomes a forked tongue that speaks for both the slave and the master. He is a wild slave brought …show more content…

The canine Buck is torn between “the call” of the wild nature and that of the civilised society. Although the two calls stand in stark contrast to each other, this contrast does not go unchallenged throughout the story. Buck’s civilised life at Judge Miller’s house is leisurely, calm, and unchallenging, while in the wilderness, the mysterious voice of the wild is savage, frenetic, and demanding. Paradoxically, these two calls seem to have underlying social codes, hierarchies, and even laws. The wild pack that the civilised Buck joins is not anarchic; the position of lead dog is coveted and given to the most powerful dog. The lead dog takes responsibility for group decisions and has a distinctive style of leadership; the main factor in the rivalry between the “civilised” Buck and the “wild” Spitz is that Buck sides with the less popular, marginal, suppressed voices of the dogs instead of the stronger ones. Buck, then, advocates the civilising mission of speaking for the subaltern rights in the pack. It is a civilising anti-anthropocentric position adopted by a wild canine animal that is strikingly similar to that of the judge Miller, the icon of civilisation. This means that the boundaries between the wild and the civilised are blurred and subverted. In other words, the civilised call of culture inside Buck leads him to speak for nature. Buck manages to attain the wild call of “nature” through the civilised codes he

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