摘 要

《荒野的呼唤》是美国作家杰克·伦敦最著名的小说之一，它确立了杰克·伦敦在美国文坛的地位。《荒野的呼唤》中的动物主角巴克原本生活在文明且暖和的南方，由于寒冷的北极地区的淘金者对雪橇狗的需求增大，因此巴克被人拐卖到了环境极其恶劣的北极地区，然而他凭借自身出众的智慧和身体素质便很快地适应了严寒的雪地环境。巴克与后来的主人桑顿建立起了彼此深厚的友谊，但恩主的遇害彻底打碎了巴克对于人类社会的留恋，从而促使巴克坚定决心，毅然走向荒野，回归自然，成为了狼群的首领。小说标题中的“荒野”一词有两个含义 即“外部的荒野环境”和“内在的野性”。通过对这个标题的解读，本文分析了大狗巴克的身份转变和精神成长。通过进一步解读标题的引申义，本文阐述了巴克的故事对人类社会的隐喻，也揭示了作者的创作意图。

关键词：《荒野的呼唤》；野性；自然；身份转变；棍棒和獠牙的法则

Abstract

The Call of the Wild is one of the most famous novels of American writer Jack London. It makes Jack London establish its position in the American literary world. Buck is a dog in The Call of the Wild. He originally lived in a civilized and warm America South. Because of the increased demand for sled dogs by the gold diggers in the cold Arctic, Buck was sent to the Arctic region where the environment was extremely harsh. However, relying on his superior intelligence and physical fitness, he quickly adapted to the cold snow environment. Buck and his later master Thornton established a deep friendship, but the murder of the lord completely shattered Buck’s nostalgia for human society, which prompted Buck to be determined to return to the wild and then became the leader of the wolves. The word “wild” in the title of the novel has two meanings - “the external wilderness environment” and “the inner wild nature”. Through the interpretation of this title, this paper analyzes the identity change and spiritual growth of big dog Buck. By further interpreting the meaning of the title, this article expounds the metaphor of Buck’s story to human society and reveals the author’s creative intention.

Key Words: The Call of the Wild; wild; nature; identity change; the law of club and Fang

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Jack London and his works 1

1.2 Literature Review 1

1.3 Structure of the Paper 3

2 The Call of the External Environment:From the Southern Paradise to the Northern Jungle 4

2.1A Pet Dog: In the South Manor 4

2.2 A Weak Dog: At Druther's Kennel 5

2.3 A working Dog: In the Toil of Trace and Trail 5

2.4 A Wild Wolf: In the Forest 7

3 The Call of the Internal Primitive Instinct: Process Mixed with Compliance and Resistance 9

3.1 Compliance: Obeying the Law of Club and Fang 9

3.2 Resistance: Never Giving up the Love for a Man 11

4 The Call for Human Beings 13

4.1 The Call of Society: To Have "Animal spirit" 13

4.2 The Call of Nature: To Find Harmony 14

5 Conclusion 15

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Reading of the Title's Implications in the Novel The Call of the Wild

1 Introduction

1.1 Jack London and his works

Jack London, a famous American novelist was born in San Francisco in 1876. He came from the “underprivileged lower class that accounts for one-tenth of the country’s population.” London used to lived an adventurous life and then picked events from his own experiences as the fodder for his profession as a writer. His works are not only widely spread in the United States, but also welcomed by people all over the world. He gets a high status both in modern American literature and world literature. Jack London began writing at the age of 24, only 40 years old when he died. During the past 16 years, he has written 19 novels, more than 150 short stories, quite a few essays and papers , and also wrote 3 scripts . His best known books include The Call of the Wild (1903), The Seawolf (1904), White Fang (1906), The Iron Heel (1908), and Martin Eden (1909).These works show us a strange and unusually vast world: the desolate and empty treasures of Alaska; the vivid characters of all kinds; the harsh struggle between man and nature; the turbulent islands dotted with the Pacific Ocean and the railway lines across the American continent.

1.2 Literature Review

The reviewers’ attention to Jack London is not so popular as on his novels before the first years of the twentieth century. There are even few comments about the relationship between Jack London and his work, and the theme is relatively simple due to age and political factors. Jack London was re-recognized in the 1960s. Scholars have classified the work of London. The earliest translation related to London's autobiography in London was Sailor on Horseback: the Biography of Jack London written by Owen Stone and Dong Qiusi in 1938. Besides, The Short Stories of Jack London, at the end of which attached Jack London’s Autobiographical Notes, About Jack London by Sinclair and epilogue of the translator. Both of them are the authoritative reference materials. John S. Mann stressed dichotomy of civilization and nature in The Theme of the Double in The Call of the Wild. Raymond Benoit also acknowledged that the struggle for freedom weakened the impact on civilization. In 1904, in a letter from George Brett to London, it is said that the purpose of writing this novel was to propose an uncivilized dog. Jay Gurion believes that this novel raises the contradiction between romanticism and naturalism. Arthur O. Lovejoy referred to the process from civilization to primitiveness in his The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality. Scholars mainly analyzed “The call of the Wild” from the following aspects. For example, Paul Horowitz interprets the novel as an analysis of metaphors. “The novel,” he belieded, “is mainly a fable about a hero’s journey which he experienced several stages of grown-up and then reached the highest level, that is, myth”(Yu Jianhua, 2009:167). Jonathan Auerbach analyzed it in The Call of the Male from the angle of naturalism and romanticism. He believes that Buck’s behavior has a feeling of reversing his ancestors, as well as the process of degradation to barbarian from the Zola naturalism. On the other hand, from a romantic primitivism point of view, it seems to be a forward-looking one, just like an adult ritual. Buck, through this ritual, turning to a myth that matures and even becomes a mysterious hero.

China's introduction, translation and research work on Jack London and his works started in the 1920s and reached its climax in the 1930s.The Call of the Wild is one of the first works to be translated into China. As his masterpiece, it has been repeatedly translated and studied by scholars in the history of more than 80 years.The researches on The Call of the Wild are mostly conducted from the perspectives of social historical criticism the comparative study with other works of Jack London. In the The History of Foreign Literature edited by Zheng Kelu, he echoes the predecessors' views by saying that: The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906) express the idea of “the weaks are the prey of the strongs” the survival of the fittest through the depiction of animals. In his book Editor of American Literature (1990), Chang Yaoxin also believes: “Buck’s evolutionary process of adapting to the environment fully reflects the basic proposition of the Darwinian theory of the Sergeant society.” At the same time, he also analyzes The Call of the Wild from the narrative angle.

After 2000, the scholars interpreted The Call of the Wild from different angles using various western literary theories Among them are comparative literature: Li Ming’s Wolf ’s Art and Human Philosophy and Jack London’s Wolf Novels (2005); Jack London reflects the human behavior from the artistic perspective of the wolf, revealing the call for love and humanitarianism; Reminiscence Wolf (Jia Pingwa 2000), the artistic exploration of “wolf characteristics” in human nature implies the writer’s worries about the current human predicament and the nostalgia for the "harmony between man and nature" in the East; From the perspective of psychology: such as Adel Tay's Junger's Collective Unconscious Theory and Jack London's The Call of the Wild (2000), using Jung’s collective unconscious doctrine to analyze The Call of the Wild to prove that the protagonist Buck is freed from his conscious self and self-fulfilled through a difficult personalization process under his own self-directed; there is also an ecological analysis: Shang Xiaojin and Zhu Fengjia’s essay The Call of the Wild: Exploring the Ecological Theme of Jack London (2006). But very few scholars analyze the implications of the title of the novel.

1.3 Structure of the Paper