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The Call of the Wild

by Jack London

Buck the dog doesn’t know the gold rush is about to change his life.

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Original language: EnglishLevel: Intermediate2,856 characters · ≈ 4 minSource: Project Gutenberg

Opening lines

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden…

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About the book

The Call of the Wild is an adventure novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and set in Canada's Yukon during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in demand. It follows Buck, a dog stolen from a California ranch and sold as a sled dog in Alaska, who grows progressively more primitive and wild in the harsh environment and eventually becomes a leader in the wild. Drawing on the year London spent in the Yukon, the book was highly popular and has inspired several film adaptations.

About the author

Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist and activist, and one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as short stories such as "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North" and "Love of Life".

Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: The Call of the Wild (CC BY-SA)

How the glosses are made

Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.

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