Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Study Notes for Chapters 1–4.
Buck is sold to three incompetent owners (Hal, Charles, Mercedes) who overwork and starve the dogs until John Thornton intervenes and saves Buck's life. Buck develops a deep, loving bond with Thornton, the first man he has truly loved. But the pull of the wilderness grows stronger, and when Thornton is killed, Buck severs his last tie to civilisation and joins a wolf pack, completing his transformation from pet to wild animal.
Tags: Hal, Charles, Mercedes, incompetent owners, overloading, starvation, dog deaths, John Thornton, White River, thin ice, rescue
Sold again
After 30 days on the return from Dawson, the exhausted team arrives in Skagway. Buck weighs only 50 kg (down from 60). The dogs are spent
The government men sell the worn-out dogs and buy fresh ones. Buck's team is bought by two American men: Hal (young, twenty, carries a big gun and knife) and Charles (forty, light hair, watery eyes)
Both are clearly new to the North. They are joined by Mercedes, Charles's wife and Hal's sister
Incompetence as a theme
Hal, Charles, and Mercedes represent the opposite of Perrault and François: ignorant, wasteful, quarrelsome
They overload the sledge so badly that bystanders laugh and advise them to halve the luggage and double the dogs
The sledge tips over on its first turn. The dogs run through Skagway, scattering boxes everywhere
They buy six more dogs (bringing the total to fourteen), none of them trained sled dogs. Buck cannot teach them
They start with too much dog food, feed the dogs too generously, and run out halfway to Dawson
Then they cut rations drastically. The six new dogs, starved and overworked, die one by one
The humans fall apart
Hal and Charles argue constantly, each convinced the other is not working hard enough
Mercedes believes she should not have to work. She rides on the sledge, adding weight the exhausted dogs must pull
The dogs become "skin and bone." Billee falls and is killed by Hal. Koona dies the next day
Only five dogs remain: Joe, Pike, Sol-leks, Teek, and Buck
John Thornton's camp at White River
In beautiful spring weather, the group arrives at John Thornton's camp by the White River
Thornton warns Hal that the river ice is too thin to cross. Hal ignores him
Hal whips and then clubs Buck to get him up, but Buck refuses to move. He has felt thin ice under his feet all day
Buck's refusal is instinctive, not learned. This is one of the novel's key moments: Buck's wild instincts now override human commands
Thornton rescues Buck
Thornton attacks Hal, knocking him down, and cuts Buck free from the harness with Hal's own knife
Hal, too cowardly to fight for a dying dog, takes the remaining team onto the ice
As Buck and Thornton watch, the ice breaks. The sledge, dogs, Hal, Charles, and Mercedes all disappear into the river
"You poor thing," says Thornton. Buck licks his hand
Why this chapter matters
Chapter 5 is the novel's moral hinge. It contrasts two types of human-animal relationship: Hal's cruel, ignorant exploitation versus Thornton's compassionate, knowledgeable respect. Buck's refusal to cross the ice marks the point where his instincts become more reliable than human orders.
Tags: John Thornton, love, loyalty, river rescue, bet, 500 kg sledge pull, Dawson City, devotion, human-animal bond
Buck's recovery and love for Thornton
Buck slowly recovers his health at Thornton's camp. Thornton's two other dogs, Skeet and Nig, accept Buck
For the first time, Buck experiences genuine love. With Judge Miller there had been comfort, and with François and Perrault there had been professional respect, but Thornton awakens something deeper
Buck expresses his love physically: he takes Thornton's hand gently in his mouth, or rests his head on Thornton's knee and gazes up at him
Thornton talks to Buck as if he were a person, and Buck seems to understand
The river rescue
Thornton and his partners are running rapids when Thornton falls into the river
Buck plunges in after him and helps pull him to safety, nearly drowning in the process
Buck breaks three ribs in the rescue. Thornton nurses him back to health
The bar fight in Dawson
In a Dawson bar, a man named "Black" Burton attacks Thornton without provocation
Buck leaps at Burton's throat. Burton is saved only because bystanders pull Buck off
This establishes Buck as both a loving companion and a lethal protector
The great sledge pull (the bet)
Thornton boasts that Buck can pull a sledge loaded with 500 kg (a thousand pounds). A man named Matthewson bets $1,000 that he cannot
The sledge is frozen to the ground. Buck must first break it free, then pull it 100 yards
Buck throws his weight forward. The sledge cracks free of the ice and moves. He pulls the full distance, step by step
Thornton falls to his knees and presses his face against Buck's. The crowd cheers
Thornton wins $1,600 in total from the bets
The pull of the wild
Despite his love for Thornton, Buck begins disappearing into the forest for days at a time
He hunts alone, runs with a wild wolf he meets by a creek, and sits listening to a howl that pulls at something deep inside him
Each time, his love for Thornton draws him back
Why this chapter matters
The chapter poses the novel's central tension in its starkest form: love for Thornton versus the call of the wild. London makes clear that both feelings are real and powerful. Buck's loyalty is not obedience (the club) or professional respect (Perrault), but love freely given. That love is the only thing still tethering Buck to the human world.
Tags: gold search, Yeehat Indians, Thornton's death, wolf pack, Ghost Dog, final transformation, answering the call
The gold search
With his winnings, Thornton and his partners Hans and Pete travel deep into the wilderness to search for a legendary lost gold mine
They find gold in a wide, shallow creek in a remote valley. They pan hundreds of dollars' worth of gold dust each day
Buck roams the forest freely during these months, hunting and exploring. He kills a bear and catches salmon. He grows larger and wilder
Buck and the wolf pack
Buck encounters a timber wolf and chases it, then befriends it. They run together for hours
Buck nearly follows the wolf into the deep forest, but remembers Thornton and returns to camp
He begins spending longer and longer away, once disappearing for four days. He hunts a large bull moose, stalking it for days before bringing it down alone
Thornton's death
Buck returns to camp to find Thornton and his partners killed by Yeehat Indians, who have attacked for the gold
Buck finds Thornton's body by the creek. His last tie to the human world is severed
In a fury, Buck attacks the Yeehats, killing several and scattering the rest. They flee in terror, calling him the "Ghost Dog"
Answering the call
With Thornton dead, nothing holds Buck to the world of men
He hears the wolf howl again and walks into the forest to find the pack
The wolves surround him aggressively, but Buck fights them off one by one. Eventually they accept him
Buck runs with the wolf pack through the moonlit forest. The transformation is complete
The legend of the Ghost Dog
The Yeehats tell stories of a great Ghost Dog that leads the wolf pack
Each year, Buck returns to the creek where Thornton died, to mourn briefly before vanishing again into the wild
The final image is of Buck, howling with his wolf brothers under the northern lights
Why this chapter matters
The novel ends where its title promises: with Buck answering the call of the wild. London resolves the tension between love and instinct by removing Thornton, the one anchor to civilisation. Buck's entry into the wolf pack is not a loss but a homecoming, a return to what he always was beneath the years of domestication.
"Buck becomes wild because humans mistreat him." Partly, but the novel's argument is deeper. London shows that the wildness was always latent in Buck's genes. Mistreatment strips away civilisation's conditioning, but what emerges (the ancestral instincts, the howling, the wolf-like fighting) was there before the abuse. Buck would not have become wild if the instincts were not already in his blood.
"The man in the red coat is a villain." He is brutal, but in the novel's framework he is teaching Buck a survival lesson. Buck himself acknowledges this: he is "beaten but not broken." The man feeds Buck afterwards and treats him fairly once Buck submits. London does not present this as just.
"Buck kills Spitz because Spitz stole his sleeping hole." That incident at Lake Laberge is the first physical confrontation, but the death fight happens much later, after weeks of tension and power struggle. The sleeping hole is one provocation among many, not the direct cause.
"John Thornton tames Buck." Thornton does not tame Buck. Buck's love for Thornton is freely given, and it co-exists with (rather than suppresses) his growing wildness. Even while he loves Thornton most deeply, Buck is disappearing into the forest for days at a time.
⚠️ Atavism is the novel's central idea. If asked to identify the main theme, instinct versus civilisation (or heredity versus environment) is the strongest answer. London frames Buck's transformation as a return to something ancestral, not a descent into something new.
⚠️ The three types of human-dog relationship. The novel structures its owners in a deliberate progression: the man in the red coat (dominance through force), Perrault and François (professional respect and fair treatment), Hal/Charles/Mercedes (incompetent cruelty), and Thornton (love). Questions about character contrast will likely draw on this sequence.
⚠️ Curly's death and the Spitz fight mirror each other. Both involve a circle of watching dogs, a fallen dog, and the pack closing in. The difference is that in Chapter 2 Buck is the horrified witness, and in Chapter 3 he is the victor. This structural echo is commonly tested.
⚠️ Buck's refusal to cross the ice (Chapter 5) is the instinct-over-obedience turning point. Buck does not refuse because of stubbornness or rebellion. He refuses because he can feel the ice is thin. His wild instincts have become more trustworthy than human judgement.
⚠️ The ending is not a tragedy. Students sometimes read Buck's final transformation as a sad loss. London frames it as a triumph, a homecoming, a fulfilment. The title itself frames the wild as something that calls, and Buck as something that answers.
Q: What does the "law of club and tooth" mean, and where does Buck first learn it?
A: It is the survival code of the North: obey whoever holds the club (human authority enforced by violence), and use your teeth to fight other dogs. Buck first learns the "club" half from the man in the red coat in Seattle, and the "tooth" half from watching Curly's death at Dyea Beach.
Q: Why does Buck refuse to cross the White River ice in Chapter 5?
A: Buck has felt thin, dangerous ice under his feet all day. His instincts, now stronger than any human command, tell him it is not safe. This is proved correct moments later when the ice breaks and Hal, Charles, Mercedes, the sledge, and the remaining dogs all drown.
Q: How does London use the character of Spitz to develop Buck's transformation?
A: Spitz serves as the obstacle Buck must overcome to complete his rise to dominance. Their rivalry builds gradually across Chapters 2 and 3, from small provocations (stolen sleeping holes, attacks on a helpless Buck) to open conflict. When Buck kills Spitz by breaking his front legs and letting the pack finish him, London signals that Buck has fully adopted the ruthless survival code of the wild.
Q: Compare and contrast Perrault/François with Hal/Charles/Mercedes as dog owners.
A: Perrault and François are experienced, fair, and competent. They feed the dogs before themselves, check their feet nightly, and earn respect through knowledge. Hal, Charles, and Mercedes are ignorant, cruel, and selfish. They overload the sledge, mismanage food supplies, whip exhausted dogs, and argue among themselves. The contrast highlights London's point that the North punishes incompetence with death.
Q: What is the significance of Buck's campfire dreams about the "hairy man"?
A: The dreams represent ancestral memory, the inherited experience of Buck's wild ancestors who lived alongside primitive humans. They show that Buck's connection to the wild is not a new development but something encoded in his blood, surfacing as civilisation's hold weakens. This supports the novel's central theme of atavism.
Q: Why does London end the novel with Buck joining the wolves rather than finding a new human master?
A: The entire novel charts Buck's movement from domestication to wildness. A new human master would reverse that arc. By having Buck join the wolf pack, London completes the trajectory promised by the title: the wild has been calling, and Buck has answered. Thornton's death removes the only genuine emotional tie to civilisation, making the ending feel inevitable rather than chosen.
This novel connects to broader study of American naturalism (compare with Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage or Frank Norris's McTeague for similar themes of environment shaping character). London's companion novel White Fang (1906) tells the reverse story: a wild wolf-dog that is domesticated. Reading both together gives a complete picture of London's views on nature versus civilisation.
The Klondike Gold Rush setting connects to American history units on westward expansion and frontier economics. Buck's journey from California to the Yukon mirrors the real migration routes of thousands of prospectors.
Jack London, The Call of the Wild, naturalism, American literature, Klondike Gold Rush, Yukon Territory, sled dog novel, Buck, John Thornton, Spitz, Hal Charles Mercedes, atavism, primitivism, survival of the fittest, social Darwinism, nature versus civilisation, domestication versus instinct, man versus nature, ancestral memory, wolf pack, Ghost Dog, law of club and tooth, Oxford Bookworms Level 3, White Fang companion novel, literary realism, environmental determinism