What a good dog! It reminds me of the film Eight Below. It was Max, the hero, who saved the whole sled-team in the extreme environment after the chief dog Maya was wounded. Eight Below had a happy ending, of course, since eight dogs were rescued by humans who were conscientiously understood their value. In contrast, there was not a happy ending in the novel The Call of the Wild. John Thornton and his colleagues were killed by savages. I felt so sorry for his death when I read this. From the very beginning I learned that Buck was a wise dog, who knew “the laws of club and fang”. But he lost his head for his beloved friend and master; he chose to “kill in the face of the law of club and fang”. The dog’s reaction to the scene was truly impressive:
“(The scene) made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For that 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…”After killing the chief of the Yeehats, “He plunged about in their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the arrows they discharged at him…”
