ANIMAL CHARACTERIZATION IN JACK LONDON’S NOVELS THE CALL OF THE WILD AND WHITE FANG
Keywords:
Jack London, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, animal character, characterization, instinct, adaptation, environment, survival.Abstract
This study examines the artistic characterization of animals in Jack London’s novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang. The analysis focuses on Buck and White Fang as developing animal protagonists whose behavior is shaped by instinct, environment, experience, and the treatment they receive from humans. Although the two novels follow opposite narrative directions, both show that animal characters in London’s fiction are not passive elements of the natural background. Buck gradually moves from domestic life toward the wilderness, whereas White Fang moves from the wild into human society. Through these contrasting trajectories, London explores adaptation, survival, freedom, trust, cruelty, and the relationship between inherited instinct and acquired behavior.
References
1. London, J. The Call of the Wild. New York: Macmillan, 1903.
2. London, J. White Fang. New York: Macmillan, 1906.
3. Brandt, K. K. “Into and Out of the Wild: The Call of the Wild and White Fang.” In Jack London. Liverpool University Press, 2018, pp. 42–59.
4. Glass, L. “Canine Narration.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jack London. Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 292–301.
