The Call of the Wild - Unabridged with Full Glossary, Historic Orientation, Character and Location Guide

THIS CLASSICS MADE EASY EDITION

At Classics Made Easy, we work to make your reading of classic literature easier and more enjoyable. Whether you’re reading for a school assignment, a cultural event, a book club, or because you love the classics, we believe that your comprehension of this book is important. In that respect, this edition is like no other. After hundreds of hours of painstaking research into every location, specialized term, and slang phrase of the period mentioned in The Call of the Wild, we are proud to present a full, unabridged edition, replete with: 

A short orientation to the story, laying out the background and key concepts you need to understand the context in which this story was written. 

A comprehensive glossary of over 150 words, including specialized dogsledding terms, slang and phrases from the time period, and other hard-to-find and uncommon words. 

An appendix alphabetically listing all locations mentioned in the story, with additional data on each.

An appendix alphabetically listing every character in the story and where they first appear.

A short biographical article on Jack London.

Never before has this story been available in a more complete and understandable edition. 

We wish you the best in your adventure through The Call of the Wild.

HISTORICAL ORIENTATION

This story takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush. Between 1896 and 1899, an estimated 100,000 prospectors swarmed into the Klondike region of Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada. 

Gold was first discovered in that area by local miners in August of 1896. When news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, fanned by media, it triggered the flood of prospectors. The rush of prospectors into the Klondike region started to decline in 1899 when gold was found in Nome, Alaska. Many prospectors in the Klondike headed there and new prospectors likewise went to the newest finds. 

Travel to the goldfields, the areas where gold was found or likely to be found, was first by ship to either Dyea or Skagway in southeastern Alaska. From there, prospectors could follow either the Chilkoot or the White Pass trails to the Yukon River. This region is an arctic climate, where average temperatures get as cold as -17 degrees Fahrenheit (-27 degrees Celsius). 

For additional context, at the time of writing, even the most basic of modern conveniences had not yet been invented. To give some idea of the state of technology at that time, lightbulbs had just been invented in 1880. The first flaked cereal was invented by John Harvey Kellogg in 1894 and the first dry cell battery was produced by Washington H. Lawrence in 1896. Handheld radios did not exist until 1937. So, survival alone in such an environment, never mind mining, was a difficult and treacherous activity. 

With this many people flooding into an otherwise sparsely populated area, towns sprang into existence to cater to the needs of the prospectors. The largest being Dawson, which went from a pre-rush population of 500 to over 40,000 at its peak. Built from wood, isolated from the rest of civilization, and without time for due care to be taken to infrastructure, the city was unsanitary and wild. 

The native Hän people suffered from the gold rush, as they were forcibly moved into a reserve, where many died.

The primary means of transport in the area was by dogsled. The sled was loaded with supplies, mainly tools and provisions, and pulled by a team of dogs. Dogsled teams consisted of the lead dog, who was the head of the team and crucial. Point dogs came next and were in pairs. Then swing dogs and wheel dogs, also in pairs. Wheel dogs are just in front of the sled and their strength and endurance to pull the sled out of frozen ice is vital. Additional dogs could be added between the wheel dogs and swing dogs. The heavier the load, the more dogs needed. However, that also means packing sufficient provisions for the dogs, usually frozen fish. Alaskan Huskies were the most common dog used in dogsledding in the region due to their endurance, speed, ability to withstand the cold, and dedication to running even when tired. Our main character, Buck, is a mixed St. Bernard and Scotch Shepherd breed.

The Call of the Wild

By Jack London

© 2024 Classics Made Easy.  This work as a whole, including all additional content - including the Historical Orientation, Glossary, Character and Location Guides, as well as About the Author - are copyrighted by Classics Made Easy. The full unabridged story, The Call of the Wild, by Jack London is a public domain work.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Into the Primitive

Chapter 2

The Law of Club and Fang

Chapter 3

The Dominant Primordial Beast

Chapter 4

Who Has Won to Mastership

Chapter 5

The Toil of Trace and Trail

Chapter 6

For the Love of a Man

Chapter 7

The Sounding of the Call

Glossary

Character Guide

Location Guide

About the Author

Chapter 1

Into the Primitive

"Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom’s chain;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain."

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through widespreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, there could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, —strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, —king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large, —he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds, —for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel, one of the gardener’s helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers’ Association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of Manuel’s treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between them. 

You might wrap up the goods before you deliver ’m, the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck’s neck under the collar. 

Twist it, an’ you’ll choke ’m plentee, said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. 

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger’s hands, he growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and that he was being