The Call of the Wild Summary  Summary (Critical Survey of
Literature for Students)  The Call of the Wild           The
Call of the Wild Summary (Masterpieces of American Literature)
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 s