"The Call of the Wild" is a touching novel about a great friendship between a dog and a human. The novel follows up the life of the dog Buck since he lived in sunny California all the way until the day he was kidnapped and tossed into the chaos of the Klondike Gold Rush and the brutal realities of frontier life. Buck changes hands a number of times before landing in the kindly hands of John Thornton who took care of him with great tenderness while not expecting anything in return. The novel carries a high moral, and the author tells us through it that we should never back down because then we will experience the disappointment of failure. However, it also has significant philosophical underpinnings, which strengthen the book and undermine some of it's weaknesses.