The Biting of the Snow- Buck's Evolution Through Call of the Wild Sierra Niemiec

“It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.”

This eye-opening statement was made by Thomas H. Huxley and a great amount of information can be gathered from it. It has long been known that those who adapt survive and those who do not perish. It is the nature of things. This occasionally harsh reality was portrayed immensely well in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Four times Buck’s adaptability shines and leads him to success, while others whose adaptability is less, die. The vast Yukon tundras and gargantuan mountains are definitely not the environments for one to live in save for the harshest and strongest of dogs. His encounter with the man in the red sweater, how he studies and analyzes the more experienced dogs, how he reverts back to the primitive, and how his fastidious characteristics from the Southland vanish all depict Buck’s flexibility that is the origin of his enormous victory over life.

Buck’s meeting of the man in the red sweater...