the-call-of-the-wild-野性的呼唤.ppt

1、The Call of the Wild -Jack London,The Call of the Wild: Background,The Call of the Wild is a novella by American author Jack London published in 1903. The story takes place in the extreme conditions of the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush.,The Call of the Wild: Background,The gold pr

2、ospectors, known as “Klondikers,” faced harsh conditions:,temperatures 40 degrees below zero,starvation and malnutrition,long journeys on foot,hundreds of pounds of supplies to transport,The Call of the Wild: Background,The indigenous people of Alaska and Canada began using sled dogs more than 1,000

3、 years ago.,They depended on these dogs for,protection,transportation,hunting,companionship,The Call of the Wild: Background,In the late 1800s, settlers and explorers started using the dogs to help them explore remote areas, deliver mail, and look for gold.,ff,Plot overview,Buck, a powerful dog, liv

4、es on Judge Millers estate in California. He leads a comfortable life there, but it comes to an end when men discover gold in the Klondike region of Canada and a great demand arises for strong dogs to pull sleds. Buck is kidnapped by a gardener on the Miller estate and sold to dog traders, who teach

5、 Buck to obey by beating him with a club and, subsequently, ship him north to the Klondike.,Plot overview,Arriving in the chilly North, Buck is amazed by the cruelty he sees around him. As soon as another dog from his ship, Curly, a pack of huskies violently kills her. Watching her death, Buck vows

6、never to let the same fate befall him. He begins to adjust to life as a sled dog. Buck is smart, tough, and alert. He learns quickly how to survive as a sled dog. Finally,Buck kills Spitz ,the lead dog ,and takes his place as the lead dog.,Plot overview,With Buck at the head of the team, his owners

7、soon turn the team over to a mail carrier who forces the dogs to carry much heavier loads. In the midst of a particularly arduous trip, one of the dogs becomes ill, and eventually the driver has to shoot him. At the end of this journey, the dogs are exhausted, and the mail carrier sells them to a gr

8、oup of American gold hunters Hal, Charles, and Mercedes.,Plot overview,Bucks new masters are inexperienced and out of place in the wilderness. They overload the sled, beat the dogs, and plan poorly. Some weaker animals soon die. Of an original team of fourteen, only five are still alive when they li

9、mp into John Thorntons camp. Thornton warns them that the ice over which they are traveling is melting and that they may fall through it. Hal dismisses these warnings and tries to get going immediately. The other dogs begin to move, but Buck refuses. When Hal begins to beat him, Thornton intervenes,

10、 knocking a knife from Hals hand and cutting Buck loose. Hal curses Thornton and starts the sled again, but before they have gone a quarter of a mile, the ice breaks open, swallowing both the humans and the dogs.,Thornton becomes Bucks master, and Bucks devotion to him is total. He saves Thornton fr

11、om drowning in a river, attacks a man who tries to start a fight with Thornton in a bar, and, most remarkably, wins a $1,600 wager for his new master by pulling a sled carrying a thousand-pound load. But Bucks love for Thornton is mixed with a growing attraction to the wild, and he feels as if he is

12、 being called away from civilization and into the wilderness. This feeling grows stronger when he accompanies Thornton and his friends in search of a lost mine hidden deep in the Canadian forest.,Plot overview,Plot overview,While the men search for gold, Buck ranges far afield, befriending wolves an

13、d hunting bears and moose. He always returns to Thornton in the end, until, one day, he comes back to camp to find that Yeehat Indians have attacked and killed his master. Buck attacks the Indians, killing several and scattering the rest, and then heads off into the wild, where he becomes the leader

14、 of a pack of wolves. He becomes a legendary figure, a Ghost Dog, fathering countless cubs and inspiring fear in the Yeehatsbut every year he returns to the place where Thornton died, to mourn his master before returning to his life in the wild.,Themes,Life evolved through a process of natural selec

15、tion. Only those strong and adaptable survived. As soon as Buck is kidnapped, he learns that a new law applies to life, different from the “law of love and fellowship” he has known before. London calls it the “law of club and fang.” The “law of the club” is that man, having greater force, is the mas

16、ter. The weak must submit and serve the will of the conqueror, or be killed.,Naturalism (Survival of the Fittest),The “law of fang” applies to the dog world. Buck first meets it when Curly is torn to pieces. He realizes, “So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.” He res

17、olves never to go down. It sets the pattern for the remainder of the novel.,Heredity and Environment London was a determinist, and believed that life was conditioned by heredity and the environment. As long as Buck lives at the Judges ranch, his inherited instincts remain hidden. However, he is rapidly changed by his exposure to a new environment.,The environment shapes him, but heredity also plays a large part. He adapts so well because he inherits the fierce instincts he needs to survive, which teaches him how to fight and how to use all t