杰克·伦敦(1876-1916)在世界文坛享有很高的声誉。他的很多作品在国内外都广受欢迎。在我国，许多读者对伦敦的作品尤其是两部动物小说《野性的呼唤》和《白牙》
都很熟悉。到目前为止，我国对于伦敦这两部动物小说的研究大多是对其内容、主题及写作方法的介绍和评议。也有一部分批评家从自然主义的角度来解读这两部动物小说，分别阐述环境和遗传对动物的影响。本文认为，在生态批评的背景下研读这两部动物小说，可以发现作品蕴涵了丰富的生态思想。生态批评是随着环境的恶化而产生的。生态批评的主要任务就是探讨人与自然的关系，特别关注人类发展对环境的负面影响。人类的发展导致环境恶化和生态危机。生态批评最现实的意义是在反思与批判中唤醒人们的生态意识。所以，从生态批评的视角对杰克·伦敦的动物小说进行重新阐释既有理论意义，又有现实意义。本文通过文本细读对伦敦的这两部动物小说进行了生态主义解读。文章分为四个部分： 第一章主要介绍伦敦这两部动物小说的研究现状和本文的创新研究。 第二章阐述生态批评的兴
起、特点及其理论原则--反人类中心主义、深层生态学和生态整体主义。 第三章分析生态批评的理论原则在这两部小说中的体现。小说的主人公对狗的控制、虐待体现了人类中心主义。伦敦对人类中心主义是极其厌恶的。深层生态更多地关注自然，而小说中狗就是自然的代表。深层生态强调生物的多样性和每一种生命形式的内在价值。首先分析狗的内在价值--狗的忠诚、自尊和智慧。这些都是狗的人性的一面；然后分析狗的野性的一面。
第四章总结小说蕴涵的生态思想并希望读者承担起自己的生态责任。
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The Call of the Wild 作者: Kelchner, Heidi, Masterplots, Fourth Edition,
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The Call of the Wild
Jack London
Given Name: John Griffith Chaney
Born: January 12, 1876; San Francisco, California
Died: November 22, 1916; Glen Ellen, California
First published: 1903
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Adventure
Time of plot: 1897
Locale: Alaska
Buck, a dog
Spitz, his enemy
John Thornton, his friend
Buck is the undisputed leader of all the dogs on Judge Miller’s estate in California. A crossbreed of St. Bernard and Scottish shepherd, he inherited the size of the first and the intelligence of the latter. Buck cannot know that the lust for gold hit the human beings of the
country and that dogs of his breed are much in demand as sled dogs in the frozen North. Consequently, he is not suspicious when a workman on the estate takes him for a walk one night. The man takes Buck to the railroad station, where the dog hears the
exchange of money. Then a rope is placed around his neck. When he struggles to get loose, the rope draws so tight that it shuts off his breath, and he loses consciousness.
He recovers in a baggage car. When the train reaches Seattle, Washington, Buck tries to break out of his cage while he is being unloaded. A man in a red shirt hits him with a club until he is senseless. After that, Buck knows that he can never win a fight against a club. He retains that knowledge for future use.
Buck is put in a pen with other dogs of his type. Each day, some of the dogs go away with strange men who come with money. One day, Buck is sold. Two French Canadians buy him and some other dogs and take them on board a ship sailing for Alaska. The men are fair, though harsh, masters, and Buck respects them. Life on the ship is not particularly enjoyable, but it is a paradise compared to what awaits Buck when the ship reaches Alaska. There he finds men and dogs to be little more than savages, with no law but the law of force. The dogs fight like wolves, and when one is downed, the pack moves in for the kill. Buck watches one of his shipmates being torn to
pieces after he loses a fight, and he never forgets the way one dog
in particular, Spitz, watches sly-eyed as the loser is slashed to ribbons. Spitz is Buck’s enemy from that time on.
Buck and the other dogs are harnessed to sleds on which the two French Canadians carry mail to prospectors in remote regions. It is a new kind of life to Buck but not an unpleasant one. The men treat the dogs well, and Buck is intelligent enough to learn quickly those things that make him a good sled dog. He learns to dig under the snow for a warm place to sleep and to keep the traces clear and thus make pulling easier. When he is hungry, he steals food. The instincts of his ancestors come to life in him as the sled goes farther and farther north. In some vague manner, he senses the great cunning of the wolves who have been his ancestors in the wilderness. Buck’s muscles grow firm and taut and his strength greater than ever. Yet his feet become sore, and he has to have moccasins. Occasionally, one of the dogs dies or is killed in a fight, and one female goes mad. The dogs no longer work as a team, and the two men are on guard constantly to prevent fights. One day Buck sees his chance; he attacks Spitz, the lead dog on the sled, and kills him. After that, Buck refuses to be harnessed until he is given the lead position. He proves his worth by whipping the rebellious dogs into shape, and he becomes the best lead dog that the men have ever seen. The sled makes record runs, and Buck is soon famous.
When they reach Skaguay, the two French Canadians have official orders to turn the team over to a Scottish half-breed. The sled is heavier and the weather bad on the trip back to Dawson. At night, Buck lies by the fire and dreams of his wild ancestors. He seems to hear a faraway call like a wolf’s cry. After two days’ rest in Dawson, the team starts back over the long trail to Skaguay. The dogs are almost exhausted. Some die and have to be replaced. When the team arrives again in Skaguay, the dogs expect to rest, but three days later, they are sold to two men and a woman who know nothing about dogs or sledding conditions in the northern wilderness. Buck and the other dogs start out again, so weary that it is an effort to move. Again and again, the gallant dogs stumble and fall and lie still until the sting of a whip brings them to their feet for a few miles. At last, even Buck gives up. The sled stops at the cabin of John
Thornton, and when the men and the woman are ready to leave, Buck refuses to get up. One of the men beats Buck with a club and would have killed him, but Thornton intervenes, knocking the man down and ordering him and his companions to leave. They leave Buck with Thornton.
As Thornton nurses Buck back to health, a feeling of love and
respect grows between them. When Thornton’s partners return to the cabin, they understand this affection and do not attempt to use Buck for any of their heavy work. Twice, Buck saves Thornton’s life and is glad that he can repay his friend. In Dawson, Buck wins more than a thousand dollars for Thornton on a wager, when the dog breaks loose a sled carrying a thousand-pound load from the ice. With the money won on the wager, Thornton and his partners go on a gold-hunting expedition. They travel far into eastern Alaska, where they find a stream yellow with gold. In his primitive mind, Buck begins to see a hairy man who hunts with a club. He hears the howling of the wolves. Sometimes he wanders off for three or four days at a time, but he always goes back to Thornton. At one time, he makes friends with a wolf that seems like a brother to Buck.
Once Buck chases and kills a great bull moose. On his way back to the camp, he senses that something is wrong. He finds several dogs lying dead along the trail. When he reaches the camp, he sees Indians dancing around the bodies of the dogs and Thornton’s two partners. He follows Thornton’s trail to the river, where he finds the body of his friend full of arrows. Buck is filled with such a rage that he attacks the band of Indians, killing some and scattering the others.
His last tie with humanity broken, he joins his brothers in the wild wolf packs. The Indians think him a ghost dog, for they seldom see more than his shadow, so quickly does he move. Had the Indians watched carefully, however, they could see him closely. Once each year, Buck returns to the river where Thornton died. There the dog stands on the bank and howls, one long, piercing cry that is the tribute of a savage beast to his human friend.
Jack London’s adventure stories made him one of the most popular writers of his day. In works such as The Call of the Wild, White Fang (1906), and Jerry of the Islands (1917) London makes animals into compelling leading characters, as engaging and sympathetic as any human protagonists. London’s animal stories do not
anthropomorphize animals simply to play on the heartstrings of his audience. Some of his contemporaries criticized him for writing maudlin beast fables suitable only for children, but these critics
misrepresented London’s books and misunderstood his literary aims. London resisted the sentimental beast fables of his day, which
personified animals to manipulate the reader’s emotions. London’s stories, instead, reflect more substantial scientific and philosophical
issues. His goal is not to make animals appear human, but to emphasize the hereditary connection that humans have with animals.
London was heavily influenced by the works of Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859, and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871). In The Call of the Wild, Buck’s experience follows Darwinian principles. He is molded by the changes in his environment, thriving because he possesses the necessary genetic gifts of strength and intelligence to adapt to his mutable circumstances. He is an example of a popular understanding of Darwin’s theories: survival of the fittest. Although raised in the domestic ease of Judge Miller’s estate, Buck learns quickly what it takes to endure the brutal world of dog-sledding — the “law of club and fang.” When Buck first learns to steal food from one of his French Canadian masters, readers are told that this “theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions.” The Call of the Wild also reflects London’s admiration for the works of nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In the North, might makes right, and Buck proves to be the animal equivalent of Nietzsche’s superman, possessing physical and mental abilities superior to those of the other dogs.
Buck, however, does not experience only raw nature. With John Thornton he returns to a more civilized existence. London’s dog stories shuttle between the poles of the domesticated and the wild, of the civilized and the natural. The Call of the Wild begins in a domesticated environment and ends in the wild. (Conversely, White Fang begins in nature and ends in civilization.) Thornton’s compassionate influence helps temper the savage ferocity Buck
develops to survive in a crueler world. The wild instinct still remains. Buck’s love for Thornton compels Buck to be obedient, loyal, and altruistic, but his wild half keeps calling to him. Buck’s romp in the woods with the wolf that seems like a brother to him anticipates his complete surrender to nature when Thornton dies. In the end, Buck obeys the call of the wild.
The Call of the Wild suggests that the reader draw a corollary
between the divided nature of Buck and that of every human being. Inspired by Darwin, London believed in the evolutionary continuity between animals and human beings. If human beings evolved from animals, then what exists on a lower level in animals must hold true on a higher level for human beings. London does not give Buck human qualities but suggests that animals and humans share
common traits and experiences because of their evolutionary
connection. Buck’s vision of the short-legged, hairy man sleeping restlessly near the fire symbolizes the primitive beast lurking within all civilized beings. Being an animal, Buck can completely surrender to his primitive half. London seems to celebrate the primordial throughout the book, lauding the “surge of life” Buck experiences when he hunts down prey, the “ecstasy” of tasting living meat and warm blood. For human beings the rift between nature and
civilization is much more complicated. People cannot and should not revert completely to their animalistic ancestry. In White Fang, for example, human beings dominated by their primitive halves are degenerates and criminals. London deals more directly with this human struggle in The Sea-Wolf (1904), suggesting that for humans a balance between the brutish and the civilized is best. Readers can also see how The Call of the Wild reflects London’s socialism. No single philosophical system satisfied London, so he accepted bits and pieces of many different, even contradictory ideas. When the ideas of Darwin or Nietzsche fell short in his estimation, those of Karl Marx seemed attractive. From a Marxist perspective, Buck can be interpreted as a representative of the oppressed,
subject to the whims of cruel masters and their corrupt use of power. Under these brutal conditions Buck must do what he has to do to survive. He becomes a brute and a thief himself, struggling individually to fend for himself. Thornton’s benevolent, more equitable treatment encourages socialistic values in Buck. He
cooperates with the other dogs, becoming productive and working for the good of the group. Without Thornton’s guidance Buck once again is left with his instinct for survival. Under corrupt power the Darwinian and Nietzschean principles of “survival of the fittest” and “might makes right” apply. Under such conditions, the primitive brute, the evolutionary residue of millions of generations, takes control out of necessity. With a less oppressive system, cooperation can flourish; the civilized half is nurtured and is able to contain the brute. Whether read as a demonstration of Darwinian ideas, an homage to Marxist socialism, or an engaging adventure, The Call of the Wild is considered by many critics to be the best of London’s dog tales. The story of Buck is the most popular of London’s many books.
Essay by: “Critical Evaluation” by Heidi Kelchner
Auerbach, Jonathan. Male Call: Becoming Jack London. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. Auerbach reverses the trend of
earlier London studies, emphasizing how London used his writing to reinvent himself. Above all, Auerbach argues, London wanted to become a successful author, and in that respect he shaped his life to suit his art. Chapter 3 focuses on The Call of the Wild.
Cassuto, Leonard, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman, eds. Rereading Jack London. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. Essays on London as “representative man,” his commitment to authorship, his portrayal of American imperialism, his handling of power, gender, and ideological discourse, his relationship to social Darwinism, and his status as writer/hero.
Doctorow, E. L. Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays. New York: Random House, 1993. Doctorow, a major American novelist, provides a long and thoughtful reflection on London’s politics and fiction; Doctorow is sympathetic but also critical of London’s example.
Johnson, Claudia D. Understanding “The Call of the Wild”: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. A collection of primary documents that provides background information about the novel, including the Yukon Gold Rush, sled dogs, and the wolf as myth, symbol, and issue in the novel. The primary sources include newspaper and journal accounts, advertisements, legislative
materials, and firsthand accounts from prospectors who sought gold in Alaska.
Labor, Earle, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. Jack London. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1994. Analyzes the elements that went into the stories that London wrote. Recognizes London’s use of mood and atmosphere. Discusses The Call of the Wild chapter by chapter. London, Jack. The Call of the Wild: Complete Text with
Introduction, Historical Contexts, Critical Essays. Edited by Earl J. Wilcox and Elizabeth H. Wilcox. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. In addition to the text of the novel, this edition includes excerpts from London’s letters and some of his other fiction, early reviews of the novel, and critical essays assessing the work.
Perry, John. Jack London: An American Myth. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981. Discusses the validity of London’s works, including London’s misleading depiction of wolves. Describes the accusations of plagiarism that haunted London.
Roden, Donald. Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang.” New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965. Begins with a brief overview of Jack London’s life and follows with an in-depth discussion of The Call of the Wild.
Stefoff, Rebecca. Jack London: An American Original. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Well-researched biography in which Stefoff describes London’s life, beliefs, adventures, and writings, placing them within the social context of his times. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index.
Walcutt, Charles Child. Jack London. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. Gives a well-rounded overview of the life and works of Jack London. Covers the effect of Darwinism and the other philosophies that London studied on his works. Discusses the use of the dog’s point of view in the story.
The Call of the Wild
内容
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Jack London
Given Name: John Griffith Chaney
Born: January 12, 1876; San Francisco, California
Died: November 22, 1916; Glen Ellen, California
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1903
Type of work: Novel
The Call of the Wild was London’s first success, and it represented an imaginative recasting of strands of thought from Darwinism and literary naturalism. The general concept of the book is a clever play on themes generated by attacks on the theory of evolution. Religious writers ridiculed the evolutionists’ idea that humans were the descendants of prehistoric apes and poured scorn on the concept that a being with a godlike soul shared traits with other members of the animal kingdom. Thinkers of this ilk lambasted writers such as Frank Norris, who in McTeague showed animal traits appearing in his characters when they were under stress.
London found a creative way to sidestep such objections, while maintaining central evolutionary tenets. Rather than showing a person descending to animalistic behavior, he describes a dog making such a descent. Certainly a dog is already an animal, but in The Call of the Wild, through a series of misadventures, a pampered domestic dog is transformed into an Arctic wolf.
A central motor of this transformation is the influence of the environment. The dog protagonist, Buck, has adapted to life as a doted-on member of the family, but his life is imperiled by the Alaskan gold rush. Sled dogs are at a premium, and dognappers are scouring the country for hardy brutes. Buck is stolen and sold north to a government courier, Perrault, and learns to adapt to the hard life of pulling a dogsled through the snowy wastes.
Buck’s adaptation is eased by the revival of ancestral traits. As London notes, “not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive. . . . [h]e remembered back to . . . the time the wild-dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest.” Such a note was often struck in Darwinian novels that described human behavior. In the already noted McTeague, the hero’s wife, Trina, becomes increasingly miserly as characteristics of her German peasant forebears come to life. More startlingly, the hero, McTeague, when pursued by the police, resurrects lost animal behaviors, such as wonderfully keen hearing. The ethnic note is also sounded. Where writers describing humans noted the part that racial qualities played in the individual personality, London sees the same type of qualities accounting for Buck’s growing superiority over the other dogs in the team: “His cunning was wolf cunning . . . his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence.”
The novel is more than a vigorous endorsement of such biological themes; it is also a Bildungsroman, that is, a novel concerned with the education of the protagonist to the ways of the world. Bought by Perrault, Buck’s main teachers are the seasoned sled dogs. He learns from them, for example, that he must not only “wolf” down his food ration to avoid having it stolen by other canines but must try to rob others’
portions to increase his prestige. Buck caps this stage of his education by killing the top dog and assuming his post.
These examples may suggest that a dog’s life is all violence and competition, but, in fact, primitivism has two faces. London’s unusual subject allows him to see virtues in a return to an aboriginal state that could not be found if humans were his subjects. To continue using Norris’s novel as a counterpoint, when McTeague becomes as wily as a hunted animal, there is little but degradation in his reversion to earlier animal patterns. When Buck recalls his ancestors’ activities, however, there is the feeling that he is returning to a truer world. Life is hard there but authentic. The pampered house dog could never experience the joy of the hunt. Buck is “ranging at the head of the pack . . . [in] an ecstasy that marks the summit of life.”
The shift in perspective allows London to stand the typical ending of the Darwinian novel on its head. In Zola’s Le Bête humaine (1890; The Human Beast, 1891), for example, the complete emergence of the protagonist’s hereditary tendency to alcoholism leads to villainous actions. In London’s novel, in sharp contrast, when Buck is at his most savage he is also most completely fulfilling his potential — utilizing his brain, muscles, and heart to the utmost.
After running a gamut of human masters, Buck is obtained by the kindly John Thornton, who allows him to wander in the woods, where he learns to hunt. One day Buck returns from an expedition to find Thornton killed by Indians; his last ties to humanity have been cut, so he gives in to the call of the wild. He ends the novel at the head of a wolf pack, a legend to the Indians.
Such an upbeat ending was out of keeping with the general tenor of fiction that dealt with such themes, but it was appropriate for a work that had shifted the terrain of such writing from human to canine society. The optimistic but logically consistent presentation of how the law of the jungle could turn the protagonist from a civilized pet into a legend of the wilderness won readers who could not stomach the representation of similar themes in a human milieu.
Essay by: James Feast
Labor, Earle, and Jeanne Campell Reesman. Jack London. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1994. Analyzes the elements that went into the stories that London wrote. Recognizes London’s use of mood and atmosphere. Discusses The Call of the Wild chapter by chapter.
O’Conner, Richard. Jack London: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. Delves into London’s childhood and formative experiences. Chapter 7 covers the writing and success of The Call of the Wild.
Perry, John. Jack London: An American Myth. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981. Discusses the validity of London’s works, including London’s misleading depiction of wolves. Covers the issue of the accusations of plagiarism that haunted London. Roden, Donald. Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang.” New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965. Begins with a brief overview of Jack London’s life. Then follows with an in-depth discussion of The Call of the Wild.
Walcutt, Charles Child. Jack London. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1966. Gives a well-rounded overview of the life and works of Jack London. Covers the effect of Darwinism and the other philosophies that London studied on his works. Discusses the use of the dog’s point of view in the story.