History YMMV / TheCallOfTheWild

** The trip with Hal, Charles, and Mercedes is this for the dogs considering it's basically a death march for them. After already being worked to the bone in grueling conditions, they're forced to immediately do it again on a journey that is doomed from the very start. By the end of it, more than half the team is dead via a combination of exhaustion, starvation, beatings, and untreated injuries, and all of them except Buck then all die along with their new owners after the incredibly overloaded sled they'd been pulling breaks through the ice, and drags them all down with it. [[FridgeHorror What's worse is that even if they somehow had all made it safely across, they most likely would've all still died, or have at least become stranded considering the distance they had left to go, and at the rate at the dogs were dying, and how many of them were actually left.]]

** The trip with Hal, Charles, and Mercedes is this for the dogs considering it's basically a death march for them. After already being worked to the bone in grueling conditions, they're forced to immediately do it again on a journey that is doomed from the very start. By the end of it, more than half the team is dead via a combination of exhaustion, starvation, beatings, and untreated injuries, and all of them except Buck then all die along with their new owners after the incredibly overloaded sled they'd been pulling breaks through the ice, and drags them all down with it. [[FridgeHorror What's worse is that even if they somehow had all made it safely across, they most likely would've all still died, or have at least become stranded at the rate at the dogs were dying, and considering the distance they had left to go.]]

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:

** The starving dogs. A group of dozens of dogs, some of whom were probably loyal sled dogs left or lost to the wild, come crawling silently into the camp as skeletal animals completely insane and hell-bent on eating everything. On top of that, they basically win despite many of them being killed because the team just couldn't stop them. Not long after this, the quiet and gentle Dolly snaps with a blood-curdling howl and runs mad, chasing and terrifying everyone in camp until she is finally killed with an ax.

* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Buck winning the bet for John Thornton by pulling a sled with a thousand-pound cargo, which leads to a...

* WhatAnIdiot: Hal, Mercedes, and Charles. Just about everything they do is stupid and they're frequently told as much by the other Alaskans. They all pay for it in the end.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: Because the story is short, the language is pretty easy, and the protagonist is an animal, this often ends up on kid's shelves and read in middle school. It's actually an extremely bloody story and not at all politically correct when it comes to race and gender.

** The Starving dogs part is terrifying: Imagine a group of dozens of dogs some who were probably loyal sled dogs left or lost to the wild come crawling silently into your camp as skeletal animals completely insane and hell-bent on eating everything including the protagonists. On top of that, they basically win despite many of them being killed because the team just couldn't stop them. Not long after this the quiet and gentle Dolly: snaps with a blood-curdling heartbreaking howl, and its so bad that she terrifies everyone, even Buck, chasing him all over until she is brutally killed with an ax.
* TheScrappy: Hal, Charles, and Mercedes for some readers of the book.

** Hal, Charles and Mercedes are more stupid than malicious, so their foolishness dooming them is still somewhat tragic. Much sadder is that it also dooms the rest of the sled dogs we've come to know, who toiled and suffered along with Buck the entire time.