The Primeval Canines
What Jack London’s Personification of Animals Suggests About Our Instincts
In many of his novels, Jack London gives animals — wolves and dogs — compelling personalities and human-like feelings. This perspective makes us see how similar all forms of life are. In White Fang and The Call of the Wild, London weaves two engaging narratives that are in a way opposites. The differences between the two main characters, a wolf and a dog, respectively, highlight shared traits and thereby provide insight into the nature of life itself.
The Call of the Wild follows the life of a dog named Buck, from his puppyhood through various stages of his captivity and then to his eventual acclimatization with his wolfish ancestral past. White Fang contrasts the tale of Buck by reversing it. It introduces us to a young wolf pup who will eventually be given the name White Fang. White Fang is raised in the wild but gravitates toward a Native American civilization and later becomes more deeply connected to the Western man. In this sense, the stories are opposites, but such a stark contrast also reveals an element of commonality. In both, the protagonist, be he wolf or dog, feels a sense of prototypical existence within him which far precedes his flesh and blood. From Buck’s perspective, his primordial self and memories take form during dreams.
