Fredonia Place Takes the Reins

For our senior seminar class, we brought Jack London’s Call of the Wild to the local retirement community, Fredonia Place. There, we met with a wide variety of people with a rich background of knowledge and shared our experiences with the book.

 

Brought together by our mutual love for canines, our audience was intimate and passionate. Sirius Dog School graced us with their presence during the discussion, bringing with them two Siberian huskies – dogs much like those that would have been used to pull the sleds in the Yukon at the time London crafted his novel. With the aid of the therapy dogs came many moments of recollection by audience members of the dogs they had loved throughout their lives.

Together, we discussed several key issues of the book. We tackled the concepts of naturalism, human nature, and the validity of an animal as a literary protagonist. We also touched on the shift from romanticism to London’s, and America’s, emerging survivalist ideology.

Too often, discussion of literature remains restricted to academic settings. The fact is, we often do not tend discuss books with individuals outside of this particular demographic. The Big Read granted us an enlightening and wonderful opportunity to engage in conversation about Call of the Wild with individuals from an older generation. The viewpoints the residents held on certain topics and themes caused us to reflect on our own literary perspectives in a completely different manner.

 

 

Our community partner, Fredonia Place, Sirius Dog School, and the individuals coordinating the Big Read Project enabled us to bring literary discussion to a location and those within a demographic outside of the traditional academic realm.

We would like to extend a special thank you to Brittany Hawkins, Activities Director at Fredonia Place, as well as Christina Jarvis and Scott Richmond for allowing us to have such an amazing opportunity and experience.