Book 13- "Call of the Wild" by Jack London

Yep, another one today. When the book is 82 pages long (and I had just read the first half over Christmas break so I could skim that), you can read it really quickly! This is my seventh classic for the year, and it fulfills a Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge requirement- "A book that was previously banned". I had already had this book planned for this year, and when I was going down a list of banned classics I was amazed that basically all books on the list of classics have been protested or banned at some point. As a funny note, Fahrenheit 451 was censored at my rival middle school. So go Venado, for censoring a book about book censorship. 

Anyway, this book is DARK. It was censored because of its bloody and graphic nature. It is the story of a dog that was taken from his master's home in Santa Clarita California to satisfy a gardener's debt (even though it wasn't his dog to bet) and sent to Alaska to be a sled dog for the gold rush. He was beaten into submission and thrown into the dog-eat-dog world of sledding. If you showed a sign of weakness then you would be killed. So Buck became the most aggressive dog and became the alpha dog by killing his competition. He is eventually sold to a man named John Thornton, who was the first man out there to show him compassion. He becomes fiercely loyal to his owner, while battling the wild inside him. He will leave the camp from time to time to run with wolves or hunt, but he always returns. Once he spent 4 days hunting a moose, finally killing it. When he came back, he saw that the Yeehat tribe had come and killed all the men and their dogs, including his beloved owner John. He savagely kills the rest of the hunters from the tribe, and begins hunting with a pack of wolves. From then on he is known as an Evil Spirit among the Yeehat.
This book can easily be applied to men. There are the men who want to do their time and survive, and there are those who want to thrive and dominate. And you need people who are strong like that around you. Because when times get tough, as they were for Buck, you need those who can lead the pack.