r, The Call of the Wild seems to have been strongly influenced by Darwin's concept of "the survival of the fittest" (Perry 79). According to Feast, by telling the story of "a pampered domestic dog . . . descending to animalistic behavior," London was making "a clever play on themes generated by attacks on the theory of evolution" (1147). In other words, London reversed the usual pattern of evolution by having Buck move from a civilized way of life to a primitive state of being. In Buck's case, this is a way to return to his roots and discover his true, primal self. However, it is important to note that The Call of the Wild is not strictly the story of a dog's life but is also an analogy for the way human beings must deal with their own primitive urges.
In this regard, The Call of the Wild can be compared to the literary form known as the bildungsroman. In the words of Feast, a bildungsroman is "a novel concerned with the education of the protagonist to the ways of the world" (1147). Other examples of this type of novel include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther in the late eighteenth century and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the late nineteenth century. A modern example of this type of novel is J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, which deals with the thoughts and emotions of a young man named Holden Caulfield as he travels to New York City in seach of meaning in his life. It is interesting that London used a dog as the protagonist in this type of story. Some people might argue that it is impossible to know what a dog thinks, and that it is therefore ridiculous to compare the experiences of a dog to those of a human being. However, in one of his letters, written at about the time that The Call of the Wild was first published, London claimed: "We know little or nothing about what dogs think. But then we may conclude from their actions what their mental processes might be, ...