law of club and fang

“The Call of the Wild” by Jack London

Such a good read. Can’t believe I wasn’t forced to read this in English class during grade school. Then again, who knows if I would have appreciated it then.

A couple of passages, to me, worth remembering. There were more but I didn’t have any post-its. I resorted to folding the corners of the pages but this was towards the latter half of the book. I guess I could’ve gone searching through previous pages and chapters……but I didn’t.

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy…it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. he was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”

“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time…love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.”

“But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed to bespeak of the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild…”

“A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.”

“It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill. At times…he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,–a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.”

A must reread.