text in the passage.
Which sentence best illustrates the theme of the passage?
from Chapter 1 in The Call of the Wild
by Jack London.
He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given them an unfair advantage Ibut now that it was off, he would
show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate
nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of
him. His eyes turned blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was he that the Judge himself would
not have recognized him, and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle.
Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that
sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and
he hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.
"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.
"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry
There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared
to watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the
outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly
intent on getting him out.
"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he
dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his
blood-shot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two
days and nights. In midair, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought
his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a
club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into
the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his
madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose
and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a
frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was
almost lion-like in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by
the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another,
then crashed to the ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and
went down, knocked utterly senseless.