Survival In Jack London's The Call Of The Wild

Survival: What does it Take?

He was stuck, he knew that much. His arm was pinned from the forearm down between a large boulder and the side of a canyon wall. He waited… And waited, and waited. For six days. What started as a leisurely climb through the beautiful Utah back country had turned into his worst nightmare. Seeing no other option, Aron Ralston began the process of amputating his own arm with a pocket knife just below the elbow. He later managed to climb down, flag down a truck, and make it to a hospita. Survival is a fight. Survival is a tooth and nail, all or nothing, never give up, do what is necessary war between you and your surroundings. Scratch, claw , punch, kick. Live. Die. Although there are many who do not survive when
Throughout the book, Buck learns to “adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death… It marked his adaptability to survive in the hostile Northland environment” (London 36). As Buck continues to grow, change, and adapt in order to survive, he must compromise some of his values and do things that he might not think is right. He also learns that if one truly wants to survive, they will be able to accomplish feats that, under normal circumstances, would never be possible, such as pulling a loaded sled with 1000 pounds by himself. “I’ve got a sled outside now with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it… Buck had done it” (London
In The Call of the Wild, Buck experiences good times and bad times under his various owners, but the worst and perhaps most challenging came under a man named Hal. “Hal’s club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly… It was heartbreaking, only Buck’s heart was unbreakable” (London 80). This shows how even in the worst of circumstances, when his body was basically decaying, Buck pushed onward and never game up. This is not unlike the story of Juliane Koepcke, who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian Amazon. After falling nearly two miles to the Amazon jungle floor out of an airplane, she wandered through mile after mile crocodile-infested waters, poisonous snake lairs, and didn’t even have any knowledge of the area. At any point in time, she could have given up, but she trusted her instincts and kept traveling in the direction she thought was the best, and eventually came across a group of Peruvian lumberjacks after ten days