Jack London’s Naturalism in “T
Abstract：Jack London embodied the naturalism in this novel, the author showed the admire for the strong will of Buck and the love for nature, but the novel also reveals the cruelty of life and the tragic fate of the masses of working people Buck represented.
Key words: Jack London, The Call of the Wild, naturalism, the law of the life
1. Introduction:
Jack London was a great novelist. He was born in San Francisco in 1876 and died in 1916. Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild was acknowledged as the most famous novel in the works Jack London has written which is set during the Klondike Gold Rush. In the late 1890s, Jack London had been a prospector in the Klondike Gold Rush .His life is full of frustrations and setbacks, but these experiences and frustrations add great color to his works. In The Call of the Wild, Jack London Integrate his experiences into the novel, which added the unique artistic charm to The Call of the Wild. Although the protagonist is a dog, the depth of philosophy of The Call of the Wild could not be caught up with by most novels about animals. [1] Shaping the image of buck had brought Jack London great international influences, which contributed to his immortal status in the history of American literature.
In The Call of the Wild, the protagonist is a dog named Buck who owned a good living and universal respect in California. Unluckily, he got stolen and was sold to Alaska as a dog slave. Buck was forced to pull heavy sled for a long distance enduring starvation and cold. Gradually, Buck adapted to the unfamiliar surrounding by learning from other dogs. After fighting with Spitz who was the leader of the dog team, Buck became the new header of dogs. He made them run faster and work efficiently. These drivers were evil, greedy and selfish and Buck was saved by a kind-hearted man named Thornton. He set off on a pleasant journey with his new master. At the end of the Call of the Wild, Thornton was killed by the Yee hats and Buck came back to the nature and lived with wolves. He experienced the great bitterness and rough in his life and he also turned many times. However, he was still in the midst of perseverance, bore hardships and stood hard work. He was clever and smart and was able to achieve the goal he wanted which was difficult achieve that general animals cannot reach. Eventually he became the strong in his life. The author thought that nature is merciless and society is ruthless and weakness could only lead to failure and destruction. The” Fangs and Sticks “in the novel is a symbol of naturalism. [2]
2.1 Naturalism in historical setting:
Many changes have taken place in the United States after the civil war in the 1900s, and the United States gradually transformed from an agricultural country into an industrialized nation. Financial and industrial giants gathered capital crazily and looted property at all cost, therefore, a few capitalists owned the bulk of the capital. At the same time, the bottom of the society was restricted by the capitalists. They lost their individuality and the initiative and their social status were low in the country. The class could only live in dirty and crowded slums. [3] When the gap between the rich and the poor is more and more big, the millionaires in American lived a luxury life when the farmers were deeply in debt and the workers were living in the crowded slums of the city. Naturalism has become a popular trend gradually. However, naturalism did not just describe the good in life, it tried to use an objective attitude to show the social states of the lives of people. [4]Just as a famous naturalist putting it, Jack London reflects the cruelty of life and tragedy with his naturalistic writing style.
2.2 Naturalism in the characters:
The naturalism in The Call of the Wild was embodied in a variety of effects on Buck. Buck lived a comfortable life in Judge Miller's house but the "gilded age" had changed the fate and life of the Buck deeply. As the gold was discovered in the river valley which was near the North Pole, thousands of people joined the trend to find the gold. Dogs were needed especially to be a transportation tool in Alaska which was a world of ice and snow. Therefore, buck was getting stolen and was forced to take the hard journey and had to take the keen nature competition. Buck was far away from home because of been sold and the experience of the arctic is drawing a vivid picture of the modern industrialized society: Violence; Oppression; Fight and Bloody. Naturalism believed that the irresistible social environment had the power to decide the fates of the human. Buck in the novel is a microcosm of the bottom of the people who were in the modern industrialized society. These people had no choice but to fight for survival with others. In order to win position, fame and fortune, they had cruel and keen competition with others, just like Buck had to fight for survival and position with other dogs. [5]
The relationship between Buck and his last host John Thornton is the most touching and unforgettable. Their relationship is similar to the relationship between the primitive human and the dogs Buck had imagined. Be with John Thornton, he could not only get some rest and get back to health, but also had realized the real love, the real love for Thornton, But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse. [6] The love in the mind of buck showed that Jack London did not agree with that the naturalism was to kill brutally to fight for dominance. Although his love for Thornton was deep gradually since then, but the original temperament in Buck existed and was still active while in the north and the temptation the howl of wolves produced was stronger and stronger.
2.3 Naturalism in the theme:
Naturalism was fully embodied in the theme of The Call of the Wild. The theme of the novel was passing out by depicting the real or fictional characters and picture of life and shaping artistic image by novelist, which would always run through his novels. "The Call of the Wild" highlighted the theme of naturalism, showing the intention of jack London. Buck was living in the environment of civilization. However, he was forced to accept the new environment which was cruel containing violence, blood and cheat. Buck started accepting the new environment different from resisting and gradually was willing to adapt to a new state of such a life. Jack London exposed and described such a cruel reality in detail, which reflected the naturalism. At the same time, in another book of Jack London, The Law of the Life, its theme also highlighted the naturalism. There was a view throughout the whole book was that everything else can be discarded as long as the whole tribe could go through the famine smoothly so that the entire tribe and even the national could continue and survive. Because of this, the old people were being forced to be abandoned while the young people were forced to abandon their home to find new place to live. The son of Koskoosh did not feel sad for his parents had to stay alone in the snow and even froze to death, or would be eaten by wild beasts. In the struggle with nature, the deep pain cannot reverse the ancient law of nature. The son of the old leader just asked a question in this difficult situation, "Is everything all right?" When they hear the sure answer, he immediately picked up his bags and ran to his tribal members to find the way to survive. Jack London also described the small baby with a few words. In the eyes of Koskoosh, the baby may be starved to death on the journey to the unknown journey because of the famine. [7]
The characters in the novel have been thinking about a question, "Why people alive?" In the eyes of authors, the gain and loss of social groups are more important than the gain and loss of person when the interests between the individual and groups conflict. The naturalism style of Jack London is also reflected in the material chosen of the novel. Different from the works of realism, naturalism writer do not use typical ways to describe the typical real society by choosing typical characters and typical events in the nature and society, what they want to describe is vulgar nature and the real social reality which is found in reality. [8] In the other 50 works of the author, the nature of the original state of life in nature was described. "The call of the wild" is a novel describing the animal which acted like human making natural behavior in the natural environment.
2.4 Naturalism in novel setting:
In order to highlight the characteristics of the United States, the short story chose a rare way. It has chosen Alaska as the prototype, making the novel more close to the original nature, close to the origin of America. In this way, the novel can cause the resonance of the readers. In the snow in Alaska, there were dogs being whipped, the running sled and busy people and so on, which was a picture of natural ecological landscape. The original life scenes deepen the author's interpretation of the subject. Naturalistic works mostly focus on the lives of people who were in lower class, such as poverty and crime. However, they did not touch the essence of social problems. They just describe the life and restored it in an objective and indifferent way. Sometimes the plot has the characteristics of fragmentation. Jack London had its own unique perspective and a creative way during developing and inheriting the traditional American naturalism. The concept of "Evolution" and "survival of the fittest" was through the full text of The call of the Wild. [9]
3. Conclusion:
Being back to the wild and interacting with wolves is the inevitable fate to Buck. However, Jack London regarded this shift as a victory rather than just a tragedy. Buck won his kingdom through his own continuous efforts and dominated the world in the face of the ruthless of the world. This suggests that the author did not approve of naturalism pessimism. In the opposite, the author looked at the fate resulting from the genetic and environment actively and stressed the importance of adapting to the unfamiliar environment to fight for the survival and freedom. [10]
The call of the wild described the mental state of Buck by using human nature. The changes in the environment aroused the wildness in the mind of Buck and aroused his hazy memory about his ancestors and the original human beings. He returned to the wild at last and has become a member of the Wolf. By describing what Buck encountered and his destiny, the society contained the difficulty in surviving and hard in life, which forced people to have endless struggles. After all kinds of hardships and setbacks, the weak can only be a tragedy while only people who are strong can be the masters of life. [11] In the 1900s, workers in American were facing being unemployed, they lost their jobs and most of them were died because of starving. In this time, Jack London created Buck, a strong dog who had fought for his new life. Naturalism had a different meaning. The naturalism in the novel reflected that Jack London tried to call on people to fight for a new life. After reading this novel, it is not only needed to think about the fate of naturalism and Buck. It is inevitable that Buck transformed from humanity to wild, morality is not very important in “survival of the fittest”. We could not deny the importance of the experience of Buck to the development of American literature.
Reference：
[1]Chang Yao xin. A Survey of American Literature. Nanjing:Naikai University Publishing House,2015
[2][6]Jack London. The Call of the Wild.译林出版社
[3]刘爱萍.英美文学赏析.北京：中国科学技术大学出版社，2008.
[4] 张祝祥，杨德娟.美国自然主义[M].上海：复旦大学出版社，2007.
[5][9][10][11]《野性的呼唤》中的自然意义.科教导刊.2012年29期
[7] Jack London. The Law of the Life.译林出版社
[8]（美）唐纳德・皮泽尔.美国现实主义和自然主义：豪威尔斯到杰克・伦敦[M].张国庆，译.武汉：武汉大学出版社，2009.
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