An Analysis of The Call of the Wild

About the author, Jack London (Jan 12, 1876—Nov 22, 1916)

Jack London (1876-1916) is an American worldwide renowned novelist, journalist and social activist. His representative works include the Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, Son of the Wolf, White Fang, etc. He is said to be a natural child. In 1889, he began working 12 to 18 hours for a day at Hickmott’s Cannery. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo. After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School. He contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine. His first published work was an account of his sailing experiences. His novels successfully reflect the contradictory views of man’s nature and destiny in and against the wild.

Have you listened to the sound of nature, such as the sound of rain, the bellow of the animals and so on? Almost all of us live in the city, where we always hear the sound of the cars and the factories instead of the sound of nature. Because of the reason, we have no access to the nature. The wild of human beings weaken gradually. Now let us read The Call of the Wild, London's classic tale of survival.

The story which is about a gentle California dog's gradual transformation into a fierce arctic predator, calls for a robust, masculine reading. Because it is told from the dog's point of view, it also demands a narrator who can communicate the nuances of both animal and human emotion.

Buck, the protagonist of the story, was a dog which was kept by human. What he could do was walking and hunting with the host. But unfortunately, the gardener who was poor sold him to the dog vendor. So Buck’s life began to change. Buck tried his best to recover his comfortable life and struggled all the time. He was unable to adapt to the bump and difficult environment initially. But a man in red beat him and made him realize the reality. As a result, he accepted the reality smoothly.

With Back being sold constantly, he showed his Strong environmental adaptive ability and outstanding leadership. He struggled with his friendgeneration and reach the leader status in them gradually. What we could see is a natural rule, survival of the fittest. He knew the rule and learned to adapt the environment.

Thornton was the only true friend of Buck. But Buck was a thing of the wild, especially when the calling of wolf from the hills. Once when he came back from hills, he found that Thornton was killed by Indians. What would you do if you were Buck when your beloved friend was killed? Buck became a nut and killed those headsmen and stayed with Thornton for two days and nights, never leaving Thornton out of his sight. And then a nearby wolf howl captures his ears, and he follows the sound to an approaching wolf pack, battling several of these creatures to prove his worth.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The

ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.

What we can see is that Buck is a cruel, cunning and intelligent image in the Call of the Wild. He killed Spitz to take the leadership, learned apace to sleep under snow and learned fast to steal food without being punished. But in my opinion, Buck in the wild, just as a man in the society, must do what he had done for survival. Jack London compared human to Buck and told us that we must adapt ourselves to the

society——learning the rules, learning the necessary knowledge and keeping forging ahead, otherwise we’ll lag behind and be obsolete. That is the life, I think.

The Call of the Wild conjures up a lost world, filled with people and place names that were so common at the turn of the twentieth century, but which have since faded away into history, lost and forgotten. It is by reading Buck's story that one can once more remember life as it was, digging up this hidden wealth from deep caves of time.

第二篇：廊桥遗梦读后感(英文版)

Review ofThe Bridges of Madison County

It is a romantic love story between a married woman called Francesca and an elegant photographer named Robert Kincaid.

Francesca grows up in a traditional family in Naples. She once had a nice romance with an artist, which was ended because of her parents’ disapproval. The cruelty of life reminded her that her future was so limited. Then her husband, Richard, who is kind, reliable and able to support a peaceful life, comes to her life.So she comes to America with Richard, leading a calm life in a small county.

But the male lead, Robert Kincaid, lives “in strange, haunted places, far back along the stems of Darwin’s logic.” He once was a soldier, becoming a photographer later. He has been running an uncertain life filled with all kinds of tale of the marvelous.

On a hot, summer’s day, they come to know each other, falling in love at their first sight. They exchange their hearts, regardless of everything of secular: money, prejudice and gossip. During the following four days, which could be their whole emotionallife, they live together, shooting photos, kissing, making love, talking about dreams and love.

All good things must come. When it’s time for Richard’s coming back and Robert’s leaving, the two of them is in so much pain as if the sky was to

fall.The soul inside Francesca calls a thousand time to go with Robert, but the responsibility of marriage forces her to stay. AlthoughRobert promises a marvelous future: “We'll make love in desert sand and drink brandy on balconies in Mombasa, watching dhows from Arabia run up their sails in the first wind of morning. I'll show you lion country and an old French city on the Bay of Bengal where there's a wonderful rooftop restaurant, and trains that climb through mountain passes and little inns run by Basques high in the Pyrenees. In a tiger preserve in south India, there's a special place on an island in the middle of a huge lake. If you don't like the road, I'll set up shop somewhere and shoot local stuff or portraits or whatever it takes to keep us going.

That’s almost an adult fairytale. But two people living together means more peace and calm other than crazy and romance. I’m convinced that Francesca may not find happiness even if she went away with Robert.

Robertis gone, without her. She spends her whole life recalling the short love with him. Life goes on, like the flowing water.

What differs love and life is passion and the emphasis – the process

or the result?

Summary of a TED talk With the assist of a projector and a three-dimensional book, the speaker, Marco Tempest, magically delivered the story of Nikola Tesla, who is considered the most impressive geek in history, about the identity

transformation from the Father of Alternating Current to a impecunious man.(The show is awesome!!)

Tesla is kind of a genius. He showed his great talent about mathematics and imagination when he was young. He took advantage of it by creating

inventions in his mind instead of the lab.And then he build them in his work shop. Throughout his life,he owned over 700 patents to his name, the most famous of them being alternating current. He had a dream, which turned out an expensive one, to transmit all the media instantly and wirelessly with the

technology of radio communication. The problem of fund wrecked his life since then. Tesla's career as an inventor never recovered.He became a

recluse. After his death, people put his ashes in a golden globe at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

The combination of magic-like illustration and a dramatic story made the speech a great success.