Call of the Wild
Chapter 4 Review
Will you have to reread the chapter?
Did you look for potential test questions?
Add the colored ICONS.
NAÏVETE is the NOUN; NAÏVE is the adjective.
Use LOGIC when placing information in
columns—you are reading a fictional text that
is organized chronologically—take notes first;
add the heading afterward. Then make any
other special columns.
• Do not AVOID difficult passages—remember
to still take notes and then FLAG that section
to ask the teacher.
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• So, who or what is the HAIRY MAN?
Observations
• The next morning, Buck trots up to the lead
position
• Francois brings in Sol-leks; Buck springs upon
him
• Buck responds to the club, remembering the
man in the red sweater
• Buck had become wise in the way of clubs,
circling and snarling out of the club’s range
• Buck is in “open revolt”—he had earned
leadership
• Perrault and Francois throw down their clubs
and acknowledge that they are beaten.
• Buck trots up, laughing triumphantly, as lead
dog
Buck Wants the Lead
• Francois had undervalued Buck’s skills
• Buck uses “judgment, quick thinking and
quick acting”
• He is SUPERIOR to even Spitz
• Buck EXCELS at “giving the law and making
his mates live up to it”
• Licks sled team into shape
• Is able to punish Pike to stop loafing and pull
harder
• Punishes Joe—something Spitz could not do—by
smothering him with his weight
• The general tone of the team picks up
• TEEK and KOONA added; Buck breaks them in
quickly
Buck Excels as Leader
• Make a record run (14 days at 40
miles/day).
• Perrault and Francois are congratulated in
Skagway and men admire their sled team
(until the next “attention-getter” happens
and eyes turn to it—15 minutes of fame)
• Then they receive new orders from the
Canadian government, forcing them to
sell the sled team
• Francois hugs Buck and weeps over him
• They pass out of his life for good.
Record and New Owners
• Scotch half-breed (a MAN) buys the team
• Now works the MAIL TRAIN with a dozen
dog teams—heavy toil each day, slowgoing, mounded sleds of mail
• Buck does NOT like the work, but he still
takes pride in it
• Monotonous life, machine-like regularity;
one day like another; being fed is the one
“feature” of the day
• 100 dogs in the train; Buck challenges
three of them for supremacy
Working the Mail Train
• Buck loves to sleep by the fire
• SOMETIMES thinks of:
• Judge Miller’s house, swimming tank, Ysabel,
Toots
• OFTENER, he remembers:
• Man in the red sweater, Curly’s death, fight with
Spitz, things to eat
• Buck is NOT homesick
• MOST POTENT MEMORY: the memories of his
heredity that gave things a seeming
familiarity—the instincts of his ancestors
• In man, this is called GENETIC MEMORY
Buck’s Dreams
• Sometimes he watches the cook and dozes off
• He sees a man shorter of leg and longer of arm,
with stringy and knotty muscles, matted hair, head
slanted back; the man utters strange sounds,
clutches a stick with a heavy stone, wears firescorched skins, is very hairy; does not stand
erect; was catlike
• This man is MAN’S ANCESTORS
(caveman)
• The man lived in perpetual fear of things seen and
unseen
• Around the man’s fire could be seen “eyes” like lit
coals, two-by-two (beasts of prey)
• Buck’s hair rises on his back and he whimpers
until the cook wakes him up
The Hairy Man
• The sled dogs are in poor condition and
need rest, but two days after pulling into
Dawson, they pull out again.
• They had traveled 1800 miles since the
beginning of winter
• Buck is tired, but still does his job
• Billee cries, Joe is sourer than usual; Solleks is unapproachable on either side
Back on the Trail
• Dave suffers most of all, becomes irritable, cries
out in the traces, falls repeatedly
• Men could not find anything wrong
• Scotch half-breed brings in Sol-leks as wheeler
• The PRIDE of trace and trail is his—even sick, he
cannot bear that another dog should do his work
• Dave flounders in the unpacked snow alongside
Sol-leks howling lugubriously.
• The men decide to put Dave back in the traces—if
he is to die, let him die happy.
• When Dave falls the last time, the team leaves him
behind; the Scotch half-breed goes back and
shoots Dave
• All the dogs hear it and know what happens.
Poor Dave