An Analysis Of To Build A Fire By Jack London

The dreadful scenery has been fully characterized in Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” where the day is being described as cold and grey, having no sun or clouds during the day, and having ice-covered ground overlapped with snow on top. The setting is as important as the man in this story because the setting describes all the situations the man is put through and has to deal with throughout the story. The setting may be more important than the character with its beauty of a frozen tundra, with its darkness from the lack of sunshine, and with its mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail.

For the animals, living in such extreme environments is not difficult for they are naturally prepared for them. It could be argued that the men in both stories could have survived if they were well equipped, this contrasts the animals which are prepared, with out needing excess equipment to survive. Crane writes the seagulls in to the story making them comfortable in the environment which the men envy and despise. “The birds sat comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey.” The dog in “To Build a Fire” is also contented in the extreme environment that it is in. A similar situation is when the man is beginning to freeze to death while the dog is warm and comfortable. “The warmth and security of the animal angered him. He cursed until it flattened its ears.” At any point the dog could dig a hole to shelter himself from the cold, and his thick fur, and natural instincts protect him. The stories also bring up the difference between the animals and man not only physically, but mentally in the way that the men use judgment and knowledge, but the animals have their instincts. London depicts this in his short story with the comparison between the dog and man. “The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew this was no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the man’s judgment. The shark in “The Open Boat” does not need to learn to swim or need knowledge to survive.

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

To build a fire is a short story written by Jack London. It is a story about an individual’s choice. The main character’s self-centeredness overcomes him, as he tries to survive the wintery weather in his travel in the Yukon Trail. He made a choice of ignoring the weather warnings, which evidenced danger in his journey. There were warnings like the absence of fellow travelers due to the cold season, but his egoism made him still embark on the journey alone, despite the warnings. The protagonist’s pride and arrogance leads to a regrettable outcome, as it leads to his downfall. The protagonist made the wrong choices because of his egotism, and arrogance and they led to his downfall. He defied nature due to his lack of logical judgment, and

     To Build a Fire is a story is a perfect example of the writing genre Naturalism. It contains elements like survival depends on instinct, nature is impersonal, man lacks free choice, and heredity and environment direct and influence our lives. In the story nature is the antagonist and is very impersonal, as it is in life. The dog

Readers of all ages, literature lovers, and book fanatics often find conflicts within their own lives just as the characters of the stories they read do. Some are able to find a way to overcome and conquer, while others get stuck behind or can not find a way to beat them. In Jack London’s short story called “To Build a Fire,” the main character conflicts with mother nature, who keeps tearing him down at every possible point. The main character, who is only referred to as the Man, is battling his way alone through the harsh temperatures of the Yukon. On this journey he runs into many obstacles and challenges. The Man does not listen to the advice he is given, leading to his inevitable death at the end. The most notable theme London builds

The main character of the story is doomed from the start. London says, “The man broke through” telling the reader about the main character’s experience with the water spring (London 337). Nature gives him bad luck over and over again, showing us his doomed fate from the start. Naturalism also demonstrates the environment being indifferent; the environment does nothing to help its inhabitants. The Yukon does not cease the bitter coldness when the man is struggling to stay alive: “He was losing this battle with the frost” (London 344). This indifference makes survival the only possible goal to try to reach. Another characteristic of Naturalism is the force of instinct. London states in the story, “The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp conscious or a condition of very cold such as in the man’s brain. But the brute had its instinct” (London 334). The dog’s instincts give it an awareness of the wilderness that is superior to or better than the man’s sense of judgment. The dog’s instinct also ties in with the Naturalistic characteristic of heredity. The dog, unlike the man, has physical characteristics that have been passed down genetically

During his journey, the man gets his feet wet as he falls through the ice into the water of a hot spring. Because of the severity of the cold, the man’s life depends upon his ability to adapt to his surroundings. After one, half-successful fire-starting endeavor, and several other pitiful attempts, the hopelessness of the man’s lone struggle

One can express many different types of themes in Jack London’s, “To Build a Fire”. Though I feel strongly that London’s theme in the story is about that the environment shapes who we are because it shows that the man is not strong enough to live up to his environment. Allowing the environment to kill the man indicates that he is weak both mentally and biologically, while on the other hand the dog is stronger by surviving the same harsh environment. Instinct superior to reason is another theme that is highly portrayal able in London’s story. In order for the dog to survive and the man to die, the dog required instinct, of which the man lacked. The man did acquire reason and observance but not good enough to allow him to reach his goal

As a matter of fact, the man seems rather flat. The author, by barely giving us any information regarding the man's personality, his life, or his physical appearance, helps in his dehumanization. By not even giving us his name as well, he keeps us strangers to him. Indeed, all throughout the story the narrator makes references to him by calling him "the man" and "he" (100). The minimum of details is revealed, and the narrator emphasizes his tendency to be insensitive and unaware of the environment he is in: "But all this--[…] the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all--made no impression on the man" (101). As if the man was not consciously aware of the danger, we have trouble entering his mind; so what is really going through his head? Unable to answer the question, we may feel upset about his lack of

If he had paid adequate attention to his internal signals he may have survived.If the man did not believe his body, there were also several external signals to guide him. He mentioned the "old-timer at Sulphur Creek" many times. The experienced old-timer warned him of the danger of traveling alone. He didn't listen to the old-timer. The man spat, and it crackled before it hit the ground.

Usually when a person is given advice from an older and wiser person, they accept and use the advice. This man refused the advice given to him by the man from Sulphur Creek. He recollected when the old man told him how cold it got sometimes, and the man laughed at the thought. Once again, after he fell into the freezing water, he remembered the old man telling him that no man should travel alone in 50 below 0 weather or colder. At this time, he had made a fire to warm himself up; all was going well. This made him think how “womanish” the old man was and how much of a manly man he, himself was (London 553). Soon, thereafter, his fire was put out by the snow on a tree because of his recklessness when gathering sticks for the fire. After that he realized how much of a fool he had been

In "To Build a Fire" shows us two characters "The Man"and "The Dog" that the man in the story is observant and careful enough to look for dangerous cracks in the river trail, but he also remarks that the "trouble" with the man is that he is unreflective and "without imagination," so that he never thinks about his own mortality

“To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a short story about a man traveling through the Alaskan Yukon to meet up with his friends for lunch. The author keeps the character nameless and refers to him only as “The Man” which is used to show a connection between humanity and nature. The story shows the hardships the man goes through to get to his destination through the Alaskan Yukon, yet unfortunately doesn’t make it. The conflict is a man versus nature theme which contrasts strong and direct relations of the hardships in nature. Throughout this analysis, I am going to explore the conflict between the man and the merciless nature he has to go through before his death.

After further and cumulative study of the story, one may come to the conclusion that the man in the story has totally influenced reality both in his refusal to allow perceptions persuade him from his mission as he set out to it and also in his utter confidence in his own perceptions of his unique and higher judgment maintaining an overly optimistic outset in regards to his own abilities. One particularly dire incident began, “The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death” (London 130). One can see by the word “shocked” that he clearly assumed nothing would go wrong, until it actually is done already.