Literary naturalism can feel abstract when introduced through dense theoretical definitions, but The Call of the Wild makes the movement's core ideas visible in a story students can follow easily. Buck's transformation is driven almost entirely by forces outside his control: environment, heredity, and the brutal logic of survival. That makes the novel an unusually clean teaching example.

Before assigning any essay on naturalism, students need a working definition they can apply, not just memorize. A useful classroom framing is that naturalist fiction treats characters as products of forces larger than individual choice, and asks readers to notice when a character's decisions are really just responses to pressure.

Once students have that framework, the novel gives them plenty of material. Buck does not choose to become a sled dog leader through moral growth. He is shaped by cold, hunger, competition, and the emergence of instincts inherited from his wolf ancestry.

Connecting naturalism to Buck's arc

A strong classroom activity has students map specific scenes to naturalist principles: determinism, environmental pressure, and the diminished role of free will. This mapping exercise works well as a pre-writing step before a full essay, since it forces students to gather textual evidence before they start arguing a thesis.

• Have students identify three scenes where Buck's actions are driven by instinct rather than conscious choice
• Ask students to locate moments where the narrator explicitly attributes behavior to ancestry or environment
• Assign a short compare exercise between Buck's decisions and a human character's decisions in the same chapter
• Have students draft a thesis that takes a position on how deterministic the novel actually is
• Require at least two pieces of textual evidence per body paragraph, not just one

What a strong naturalism essay looks like

The strongest student essays on this topic avoid simply asserting that the novel is naturalist and instead argue for how strictly it follows the movement's conventions. Some students will argue London leaves room for individual will in certain moments, and that nuance is exactly the kind of debate the rubric should reward.

Weaker essays tend to define naturalism in the introduction and then never return to the concept, defaulting back into general plot summary. Flagging this pattern early in feedback helps students catch it before their next draft.

Grading considerations for this essay type

Because naturalism is a somewhat technical literary concept, grading criteria should separate conceptual understanding from writing mechanics. A student can misapply a term like determinism while still writing clean, well-organized prose, and the rubric should be able to reflect that distinction rather than collapsing it into a single overall score.

Providing a short glossary of naturalist terms alongside the assignment reduces the number of essays that misuse vocabulary, which in turn makes grading faster and more focused on the quality of the argument itself.

Extending the unit

Teachers who want to extend this unit sometimes pair The Call of the Wild with a short excerpt from another naturalist writer, giving students a comparative angle for a second essay. This works particularly well in survey courses where naturalism is one of several movements being covered.

Even without a comparative text, treating the novel as a case study in naturalism gives students a concrete, memorable anchor for a literary concept they will likely encounter again later in their education.