The Call of the Wild is commonly linked to which literary movement?

Study for the Chronological Movements in American Literature Test. Explore key literary developments with multiple-choice questions, flashcards, and detailed hints. Get ready for your exam!

Multiple Choice

The Call of the Wild is commonly linked to which literary movement?

Naturalism focuses on how environment, heredity, and social forces shape behavior, often presenting life as harsh, indifferent, and governed by forces beyond individual control. In The Call of the Wild, Buck’s fate is driven by the brutal Yukon climate, his animal instincts, and the demands of survival under human exploitation. London depicts the world as a powerful, impersonal arena where external circumstances push characters toward primal responses rather than toward noble ideals, mirroring naturalistic ideas of determinism and the influence of nature on conduct. That emphasis on what the environment and heredity do to a character aligns with naturalism more than with Romanticism’s idealization of emotion, Realism’s everyday fidelity without the fatalistic force, or Modernism’s later experimental tilt.

Naturalism focuses on how environment, heredity, and social forces shape behavior, often presenting life as harsh, indifferent, and governed by forces beyond individual control. In The Call of the Wild, Buck’s fate is driven by the brutal Yukon climate, his animal instincts, and the demands of survival under human exploitation. London depicts the world as a powerful, impersonal arena where external circumstances push characters toward primal responses rather than toward noble ideals, mirroring naturalistic ideas of determinism and the influence of nature on conduct. That emphasis on what the environment and heredity do to a character aligns with naturalism more than with Romanticism’s idealization of emotion, Realism’s everyday fidelity without the fatalistic force, or Modernism’s later experimental tilt.

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