(urth) Tracking Song and The Call of the Wild

[Matthew Groves]

Nigel writes:

>I'm feeling very stupid at the moment. I've read "The Call of the Wild",
and even read it within the last couple of years, but at the moment its
connection to "Tracking Song" entirely eludes me, even though "Tracking
Song" is one of my favourite Lupine tales. Far from being bored, I should be
deeply fascinated, Matthew, if you would expound upon the correspondences.

Well I'm having trouble being coherent, so please bear with me through some
tangled reasoning. But the big clues are:
- the frozen wasteland setting (referencing CotW's Alaska and northern
Canada). (We even have a possible analog for CotW's aurora borealis in TS's
mirror dust that reflects the sun and warms the planet.)
- the Great Sleigh (referencing the dog sleds in CotW)
- the animal tribes, corresponding mostly to North American species,
especially the Wiggikki (wolves), the Lenizee (deer) and Nashhwonk (moose).
(Though the Pamigaka (boars) and Ketin (lion) are problematic in this
respect.)

So _The Call of the Wild_ is a story of a civilized dog rediscovering the
dormant "primordial beast" -- the wolf within. Buck learns "The Law of Club
and Fang," which says that Man is the master and cannot be overcome, but
that the other dogs can be mastered through brutality. Finally, Buck learns
to kill Man -- learns that it is all too easy. "Tracking Song" is a little
like the reverse of this, or rather it is a sort of postlude to CotW.
Cutthroat struggles away from brutality towards something like grace. At the
end of CotW, Buck is among wolves; Cutthroat begins among the wolves (the
Wiggikki), and returns to the Great Sleigh, which also turns out to be a
church/spaceship/eden. TS is a "Pilgrim's Progress." The "tracking song" is
the song of the Wiggikki hunters, "a rising and falling wail," which is a
wolf's song, which is the "call of the wild."

The beginning of CotW suggests the meaning of Cutthroat's "birthmark." Naïve
California dog Buck is abducted by the laborer Manuel ("man-well," source of
Mantru ("man-true")?) to be sold and shipped north to pull sleds for greedy
prospectors in Alaska and Canada. Manuel slips a rope around Buck's neck
that is used to choke him. So I think Cutthroat's mark means he has been
taken against his will. Wolfe's familiar theme of Freedom is in play.

The nickname "Cutthroat" suggests that he is a murderer, and that his exile
from the Great Sleigh is punishment. (Hence Borski's interpretation of
Cutthroat as Cain.) At the end of CotW, in a rage over the death of John
Thornton, Buck kills the Yeehats by tearing open their jugular veins, i.e.
he becomes a cutthroat. So I think Cutthroat's crime is that he is a
murderer, but that has killed out of revenge.

Unlike Buck in CotW, who becomes increasingly ruthless and brutal, Cutthroat
becomes increasingly reluctant to kill and squeamish about eating the flesh
of the animal tribes. He doesn't want to eat the Lenizee doe; he gives away
his share of the meat from the moose-man Nashhwonk (cf. Buck's ruthless
pursuit of the wounded moose); and he refuses to kill the lion-man Ketin.
Repeatedly coming into possession of increasingly powerful weapons (the
clubbow, the endieva wand, and the horned staff), leaves them behind one by
one.

If the "Great Sleigh" is present as a single sled in CotW, then I think it
is the one-ton sled, locked in ice, that Buck pulls for John Thornton's bet
("As you love me, Buck."). Taking this interpretation, the Great Sleigh
reflects Wolf's theme of the redeeming power of Love. Like the CotW's
interlude with John Thornton, there is an analogous deviation in Cutthroat's
pursuit of the Great Sleigh when he goes after Cim Glowing, whom he is
growing to love.

That's the best I can do for now; surely others can be clearer, cleverer,
more thorough and more eloquent than I have been here. I just got _The
Castle of the Otter_ and I want to go read it.

Matt G.
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