Conflict In Jack London's To Build A Fire

In this passage from the book In Cold Blood, the author Truman Capote introduces a small town in Kansas. He states that Holcomb is a small, lifeless town with run down shops, restaurants, and many other buildings crumbling at the base. Capote makes the readers think that this place seems pretty normal and nothing really happens there, but in the last paragraph he makes it very clear that something strange will happen. Within the first few paragraphs of the passage, he begins to draw the readers in with the tone and imagery he uses.

As the man travels on through the freezing temperatures he is remind of advice from and old wise man, he had been warned of traveling alone and the dangers that could come with someone making such decisions. The traveler was hopeful of making it back to camp by six o’clock, and an hour into his travels he is ready to stop and eat his lunch with pride in his traveling progress. However, an hour into his travels the arrogant man was more concerned with chewing his tobacco, than thinking of potential dangers despite his warnings, so he stopped for lunch, never sharing with his only traveling companion, his loyal dog.

He characterizes the native dog as gray-coated and wolf-like, yet he evinces the animal’s innate intuition when he writes, “The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the man's judgment” (London). This direct characterization of the dog serves to contrast the man’s poor judgment. Despite the dog’s apparent anxiety, the man remains disillusioned that he is fine. Cohen brings attention to this lack of reverence for nature that the man displays. “Had the man regarded the fire with a greater or perhaps different kind of respect, he might have survived” (Cohen). The man’s arrogance and lack of respect for the power of the natural world led to his demise. The characterization of the dog highlights how the man ignores his dire condition out of arrogance and dies as a

The story “To Build a Fire,” by Jack London, is set in a freezing Yukon and he uses the descriptive language to give a glance into the harsh weather which in return, gives the plot better understanding.. The choice, I believe, is to give a mood that would allow the setting to develop slowly with anticipation. London gives a dogs instinct that like a dog it can since danger nearby.

When one decides to look past the flowery language and romanticized ideas present in literature and society, it becomes apparent that nature is a cold, brutal, and unforgiving place. The comfort that comes from believing each individual holds a special place in life is belittled by the sad truth that the universe is not too concerned with whether or not each person on the planet lives or dies. The trend of naturalism that appears in American literature during the post Civil War era capitalizes on this way of thought, and brings out themes of the cruelty of the world in a matter-of-a-fact way. Ultimately, Jack London’s To Build a Fire is a stark but realistic presentation of man and the natural world that displays the characteristics of naturalist writing.

Jack London’s short story titled, “To Build A Fire” is one of the most symbolically brilliant stories that has contributed to the development of our American literature.  It is too easy to go on and on about the hidden teachings that Jack wanted his readers to learn from and ponder over.  So, get ready to read.

“It was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him.” An analysis of the conflicts faced by the Man in To Build a Fire In To Build a Fire, Jack London uses the man’s conflicts with the dog and nature to portray the frailty of Man. These conflicts form when the man’s ideals or actions are contradictory with that of other characters or elements in the short story. The 2 main conflicts faced by the man are the conflicts between him and the husky dog, and the conflicts between him and nature.

The opening scene establishes our main character’s inability or lack of care towards his own survival. ‘To Build a Fire’ begins with our main character, a man, hiking the Yukon trail on a bitter cold day. He had no supplies and did not care. “It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man.” The last sentence shows his state of mind and the reader what they will get into. ‘This fact…’ the last sentence of the quote begins this way to establish its’ dry and dark humor. “But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it.” The ‘absence’ of the sun is gone, leaving a dark dreary sky with a foreboding mood attached. Describing the cold as ‘tremendous’ and foreign to the man is a nod to the reader to how this character sees the environment. It seemed as the

Mark Batterson, an American pastor and author who serves as lead pastor of the National Community Church in Washington D.C. once said “You are one decision away from a totally different life.” Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is an examination of one man’s journey through the Yukon wilderness, alone in less than ideal conditions. The setting in the story “To Build a Fire” is the Yukon territory during a cold winter with frigid temperatures that were measured in excess of seventy-five degrees below zero. The man in the story succumbed to the conditions and deserved what happened to him. Jack London uses setting and theme to help communicate his message.

The narrator described the surroundings to the reader in quite a detailed manner. From another point of view this would not have been as effective. For example, when simply describing the temperature the man and the dog both felt, then contrasting it with the real temperature helped the readers grasp an understanding on three things. First, how familiar the man was with his surroundings, second, how the dog felt, and lastly, how accurate they were. At the beginning of the short story London writes “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter.” (par. 4) This shows that the man was had already had experience with the cold, since he knew spit froze on the ground, but didn’t have experience with cold lower then negative fifty. This quote also shows that he felt equipped to survive

A clear-cut example of this unproductive struggle is a story by Jack London, To Build a Fire whereby he uses man versus nature to support his primary theme that our struggle against nature is vastly unequal one that leaves little or no margin for error (London, 25). To prove this theme Jack London, in his book puts a man in an environment he is unfamiliar with. In this

One thing that impacts setting is plot. An example of how plot impacts setting is the location. The evidence that I found in the story, To Build a Fire, by Jack London, to support how the location affects the plot is that it sets the tone. The main character's goal was get to camp to meet up with his "boys". With the weather getting bad and the man not making it to the location it just makes the story. Could you imagine the story taking place at a park, or at the beach? The next piece of evidence would of course be how the blizzard affects the setting of the story. London describes the ground that the man was walking on was a thin sheet of ice with three feet of snow on top of that. This plays an important part because later in the story the man starts walking and doesn't notice that he was actually walking on the frozen lake until he falls through. So with there being a blizzard going on it snowed a lot on the Yukon Mountains. This means you could see the footprints of other traveler but unfortunately those footprints would be gone in an hour.

The unnamed man’s looks give readers a sense of who the character is. The man is traveling through the Yukon Trial to a campsite in Henderson Creek. It is the season of winter and the way he dresses puts an impact on how well prepared he is for this journey. Winter in the Alaska is quite different then a winter in the south. The temperature that the man is traveling in is negative seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. In “To Build a Fire”, London states “Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks” (1813). The man knowing of the basic clothing to have during this journey shows that he knows what type of weather he is about to embark in. However, while

As he trudged through the snow with the native dog at his heels, his thoughts were not occupied by the danger that he was putting himself into. The temperatures in the Yukon were about 75 degrees below zero, but that had no effect on the man, and did not phase him. The narrator states, “ He was quick and ready in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in their meaning” (London 1). While the man could act fast when in dire situations, he lacked a common sense and natural human instinct that could prevent him from landing in those situations in the first place. This quality certainly took its toll on the man later in his journey, when his lack of realization of the cold finally caught up to him. The narrator also stated, “Nor did he think about man’s general weakness, able to live only within narrow limits of heat and cold” (London 1). Once again, the unwise man did not take into account the frigid and life-threatening temperatures he was facing. Humans obviously cannot survive in conditions like those, but the man, being ignorant, ignored this and went on with his journey anyway. The man definitely showed his foolishness because he was so careless about his

As London in “To Build a Fire” starts the short story, he lays down all the ground work, the environment and the man. The man, whom was traveling alone, set off and turned aside from the main Yukon trail determined to meet with his friends at the camp. It was clear it was an indubitable cold day, there was no sun nor hint of sun, no cloud in the sky, an intangible pall over the face of things, a gloom that made the day dark,