Abstract

As an active literary school, naturalism has become one of the chief features of contemporary American philosophy, which has lasted for merely a little more than twenty years but produced some classical writers and scriptures. The analysis of naturalism is considered to be a requisite aspect in studies of many famous works, with The Call of the Wild as common material. Based on the existent theories of naturalism, this paper aims at analyzing the intense coloring of naturalism in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The major purpose of this study is to help readers achieve a better understanding of naturalism in the course of the development of American literature.
 
Key Words: naturalism The Call of the Wild  Jack London  survival of the fittest

摘 要

作为一个活跃的文学流派，自然主义已然成为当代美国哲学的主要特征之一，仅仅持续了二十余年就已产生了一批经典作家和经典作品。在研究许多著名的作品时，《野性的呼唤》最常被作为研究对象，对其自然主义的分析被认为是必不可少的一个方面。本文在已有的自然主义相关的理论基础上，分析杰克•伦敦的《野性的呼唤》中自然主义的强烈色彩，主要目的是希望读者能通过阅读本文更好地理解美国文学发展中的自然主义。

关键词: 自然主义 《野性的呼唤》 杰克•伦敦 适者生存

1.1 Research Status
In the past, overwhelming famous writers and novelists become gradually familiar to readers, such as Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris and Jack London. In particular, Jack London, a prestigious writer in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, is one of the typical naturalistic novelists. His life created many outstanding works, including White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, The Iron Heel and Martin Eden, especially The Call of the Wild, which is a typical naturalistic novel. This novel is based on the background about the frozen Alaska and the natural environment of Klondike. Territory here is cold and wild, ‘wilderness’ is the the theme of nature and it belongs to the type of naturalism.
As a trend of thought in literature and art, naturalism is a universal literary phenomenon taking place from the 1880s to 1940s. Although this time is not very long but the influence is extremely profound. Like realism, regarding ordinary things in our contemporary lives as creation material, naturalism gives an objective description about advocate to reality. However, unlike realism, American naturalism contains a profound philosophy. Naturalistic works reveal the dark rigor of life, for instance, poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease. Consequently, naturalistic writers are frequently criticized for paying too much attention to human abuse and suffering.