The philosophy behind The Call of the Wild was shaped by London's reading of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Kidd, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others.

Buck, the novella's canine protagonist, is both a product of natural selection and an example of Nietzsche's heroic morality.

But the archetypal nature of The Call of the Wild links it with the tradition of great American symbolists: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville. London's connection with Melville is most interesting, for both authors explore the limits of knowledge and utilize powerful animal symbols in hostile environments.

Buck's response to the mystical call of the wild and his transformation into a mythical figure are reminiscent of Melville's symbolic use of the white whale in Moby Dick (1851).