The Call of the Wild is the classic dog novella, the book to check out if you want to know how dogs were portrayed in classic literature. Nobody could deny Jack London's reputation in his genre, and thousands of readers seem to love his dog stories. He was certainly a good author, as it is almost impossible to think of any other author who might have been able to paint such a dark, realistic and captivating picture of the Alaskan landscape, of nature's rudeness and the frameworks of the laws of nature. 
 This is the story of Buck, a dog who has suffered through almost everything a dog could have to suffer through in his life. He is a dog born to luxury and kidnapped into wilderness, who has to learn to adapt himself to the rules of nature in order to survive, who has to realize that Charles Darwin's quote from Origin of Species is not merely a quote: "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." 
 The point of this novel completely forgot to make its presence felt to me, however. Maybe London wrote about how you have to accept the rules of nature, maybe he wrote about the strong connections between human beings and dogs, maybe he wrote about the cruelty of humans, maybe even about the cruelty of nature - all those are motifs certainly recognizable in this novel. To me, they appeared as if they were randomly interspersed into the book just for the sake of being included. However, that doesn't mean this book doesn't earn its classic status. It is a good book after all, I just didn't care about it as much as I did about White Fang. 
 In my opinion, White Fang is way more intriguing than this novel, yet for some reason, The Call of the Wild is the more popular and beloved one, so I recommend reading this first and White Fang afterwards as it seems like I was let down by my high expectations after having read and loved White Fang years ago.