In the first part of this post, I explained why "The Call of the Wild" is a phenomenal parable for masculinity, and discussed the first chapter. In this section, I discuss chapters two and three.
Chapter Two: The Law of Club and Fang
Buck’s Introduction to The Northland
“Buck’s first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment of life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.”
Buck’s first introduction to this new reality came when Curly, a dog he had been traveling with since he was sold by The Man in the Red Sweater. Curly, still following the laws that governed The Southland, approached a husky in a friendly manner. She was immediately and violently attacked. Thirty or forty huskies surrounded the combatants in an “intent and silent circle.” The husky fought as wolves fight by striking and leaping away. The fight didn’t last long. As soon as Curly was down, the circle of huskies pounced and tore her to shreds.
Such is the nature of the Law of Club and Fang.
No fair play. Once you were down, that was the end of you.
Spitz and the Nature of Bullying
Buck was purchased by two men, François and Perrault, who added Buck to their sled dog team. He joined a host of other dogs, each with their own unique personality. Buck quickly learned the job, and by the end of the first day was proving to be a valuable member of the dog team.
Shortly after, two new dogs were added to the team, Billee and Joe. The team’s leader, a dog named Spitz, exerted his dominance by thrashing Billee. Joe, though, refused to appease Spitz’s dominance by fiercely snapping back at the pack leader. Eventually, Spitz gave up and went back to harassing submissive Billee. Here buck learns a valuable vicarious lesson - stand up for yourself. Later, Buck would put this lesson to use by learning an aggressive posture kept the savage dogs at bay.
The lessons Buck learns here are one of the foundations of the way of men. Masculinity is defined by a hierarchy of competence, and your position in the hierarchy is based on your actions. It is earned, not given. And your position in the hierarchy is always being tested.
The plight of Curly also teaches us a valuable lesson about masculinity. Friendliness that is not based on the capacity for violence is merely weakness. Men who are not capable of violence are not peaceful, they’re harmless. And under The Law of Club and Fang, being harmless is fatal.
No fair play. Once you are down, that was the end of you.
The Joy of Hard Work
In this chapter, Buck also learns the raw joy of the toil in the traces (the harness that connects him to the team and the sled.) Working hard, together, towards a mutually-held goal is the supreme expression of their being.
It’s on the backs of hard-working men who take pride in their work that they build places like Judge Miller’s place in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Without their sacrifices, civilization would not exist. This is what gives us a sense of purpose; this is what gives our life meaning. Without such purpose, we wander aimlessly day-to-day, on a slow, uninspiring march to our graves. We need to work hard, and we need that work to matter. Such is the way of men.
The rest of the second chapter is devoted to London describing the transformation Buck makes from a soft, naive dog who was born into The Southland under the Law of Love and Fellowship to the hardened, capable dog in the Northland under the Law of Club and Fang. Buck learns to survive and thrive in this harsh, primal world. Buck also begins to discover the part of him buried deep in his genes.
“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primevel forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task of him to learn to fight with the cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And then, on the cold, still nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down though the centuries and through him. And his cadences were his cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark.”
Buck, through the struggles to survive The Northland, discovered his true being that did not exist in The Southland. In the same way, the safety and comfort of modernity obscures the primal essence of our masculinity. Too many men in the modern world will go to their death bed without ever experiencing this supreme expression of our being. A good number of us will experience fleeting glimpses of primal selves, usually when we’re doing something so immersive time stands still and the outer world fades away. Some of us, the luckiest of us, create a world within modernity where our actualized, innate selves become our way of life.
This is the reason this project exists.
Chapter Three: The Dominant Primordial Beast
Learning to Thrive in The Northland
In the third chapter, Buck continues to grow and evolve as became more connected with his ancestral heritage. He develops poise and self-control, and learned to avoid fights whenever possible. He developed a deliberateness and developed the most prized of survival virtues - patience.
As Buck continues to thrive in The Northland, he witnesses a steady stream of dogs from The Southland fail. These dogs who knew nothing but The Law of Love and Fellowship were all too soft, and died under the rigors of the toil, the frost, and starvation. He could match the dogs of The Northland in strength, savagery, and cunning, which allowed him to succeed where other Southland dogs failed.
In the same way, we see soft men fold in the face of true adversity. Unaccustomed to struggle, pain, and suffering, they simply give up. We celebrate heroes on TV and film who rise to the occasion, and convince ourselves we are them. When the masculine virtues of strength, courage, mastery, and honor are needed, they’ll magically appear.
But that’s not how it works. Most of us aren’t Buck. Most of us are the steady stream of nameless dogs that are dragged from the comforts of The Southland. We’re soft and weak, and never face the adversity that will build the kind of resiliency we need to survive when we leave the safe, comfortable confines of our own version of The Southland. We’ve only learned The law of Love and Fellowship, and The Law of Club and Fang breaks us.
Pride
This chapter also reveals Buck’s desire to usurp Spitz as the leader of the team because “it was his nature, because he had been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trial and trace - that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness.” That pride is what drove Buck to desire leadership.
At its core, pride is a natural emotion that arises from a sense of accomplishment, recognition, or belonging. It can motivate individuals to work hard and strive for excellence in their endeavors. It’s the emotion that has driven men to accomplish great things.
But modernity treats pride like it’s a cancer that drives men to overestimate their abilities, ignore feedback and criticism, and become unwilling to learn or grow. Modernity believes pride creates a sense of superiority or entitlement that can damage relationships and lead to conflicts with others. Under The Law of Love and Fellowship, pride may very well be problematic. But under The Law of Club and Fang? Pride is what drives men to create the civilization that has the safety and security to vilify pride.
The Paradox of Living
Chapter three also introduces one of the most powerful passages of the novel:
“All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill - all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame, it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter, and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food was alive and fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”
No other passage in the book exemplifies the pure joy men get when immersed in manly pursuits, especially in the presence of other men who share mutual respect and honor. This is what it meant to be a man to our grandfathers and their grandfathers before them, and it is what it means to be a man to us.
Using Your Head to Become a Complete Fighter
In this chapter, Buck finally fights Spitz for the position at the head of the team. Necessarily, it is a fight to the death. Spitz is an experienced, skilled fighter; it’s part of the reason he’s the leader of the team. In fact, in their fight, Spitz is winning due to his superior skill set. Buck, though, is capable of fighting not only by instinct, as his wolf ancestors fought, but also with his head. Buck uses his imagination to change up his tactics, which allowed him to break Spitz’s legs. London highlights a key difference between The Southland and The Northland by noting “Mercy is a thing reserved for gentler climes.” Buck finishes his opponent off and leaves him to the same fate at the hands of the circle of huskies Curly faced earlier. “The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good.”
Buck’s vanquishing of Spitz exemplifies the value in not only being skilled and channeling your instincts, but also using your head. Buck prevailed because he was more well-rounded than Spitz, and his versatility allowed him the creativity to use unorthodox, outside-the-box tactics that gave him the advantage in the fight.
Throughout human history, the most successful men brought a lot to the table. They weren’t one trick ponies; they were the complete package. It behooves us to develop a wide range of skills and knowledge.
~Jason
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