https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.094
Buck Became His Own Master: The Untameable Animal Instinct in Sanders’s The Call of the Wild
KAMDA SINGH DEO
Department: Languages (English)
School of Sciences, Jain (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka
Email: kamda.singh@jainuniversity.ac.in
SATHISH KUMAR H
Department: Languages (English)
School of Sciences, Jain (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka
Email: sathish.kumar@jainuniversity.ac.in
DR. RAJESH KUMAR SINGH
Department: English
Sant Guru Ghasidas University, Sarguja, Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh
Email: rjsd511@gmail.com
Abstract: The Call of the Wild is considered a children’s film despite the violence evident throughout. Chris Sanders has explored the violence against animals in both subtle and extreme degrees in his directorial venture. This paper aims to explore the life of the protagonist canine, Buck, who is on the receiving end of most of the violence in the film, and the ways in which the three registers of the psyche are at work in responding to this violence and shaping his existence. The internal struggles, desires, and motivations of Buck are explored through Freudian Psychoanalytic theory, which contends that an animal’s impulses are not something to be tamed; instead, they reveal the truth of its existence. The paper briefly extends the argument’s scope to human animality, which is continuously repressed by society, as an authentic expression of human nature. Thus, the animal challenges human efforts to repress and regulate animality within the animals and humans alike, exposing the possibility of a more authentic expression.
Keywords: Animality, Psychoanalytic theory, Nonhuman ontology, Violence
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