The earth has been around for far longer than humans have. Mankind has grown to think that they’re better than everything, but we are wrong, nature always wins and mankind shouldn’t fight it. Over hundreds of years’ humans have evolved and created an incredible life where we have everything we need or can get it. We don’t have to go out and hunt for food anymore we have stores, we also have homes with running water, AC, and heat. We have grown so accustom to this life style that if it got all taken away tomorrow, we wouldn’t know how to survive. Mankind is losing its survival instincts, which Jack London tries to bring to our attention in the short story, To Build a Fire. In the short story the main character, a young man who remains nameless, is in the wilderness accompanied by a husky dog around what we know as Alaska today. It is an extremely cold morning at nearly 50 degrees below 0. Throughout this short story, the man is traveling alone with the dog trying to meet up with his buddies at an old claim. The man’s many actions through his journey shows us the true reality of man vs nature. He must look at his thermometer to tell how cold it is, he doesn’t know how to survive in this harsh of weather, he is …show more content…
The dog is a part of nature and has been living out in this area probably for a long time now. Animals like it know how to survive based on their natural instincts. The dog doesn’t need a thermometer to know it’s cold, it doesn’t need advice from others it just knows what to do, when it starts getting cold especially at night, the dog knows how and when to take shelter from the brutal weather, it doesn’t need to build a fire. When the dog gets its feet wet it immediately starts trying to get the ice off. When it comes down to the end of the story, the man ends up freezing to death and the dog lives, ironically going to the place the man was going for the dog knew where the food and warmth
Per Reporter: Onslow County received a report on 1/22/18 with concerns of the living condition of the home; dirty home feces on the floor and body odor. During the investigation, there were concerns with the mental health status of both parents. Shomari has been inpatient twice for making suicidal statements. Gabriella is diagnosed with bipolar, ADHD & Depression, which she is not being treated for. Previously Gabriella and Shomari had a verbal altercation about ordered food; Shomari’s food arrived before Gabriella’s did. Gabriella became upset, went upstairs and wrote her suicidal thoughts down. Gabriella went downstairs and handed Shomari the paper. Gabriella and Shomari stated that Sabastian was sleeping during the altercation. There have
The man represents the fraction of society that doesn't respect nature. He doesn't understand the power of nature because he is oblivious to it. On the other hand the dog was "told a truer tale than that was told to the man by the man's judgement." The man "did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold." "The was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man." The man and the dog are together because the man needs the dog, and the dog has no choice. They have no emotional connection between them because the dog is used as a slave. In one part of the story the man uses the dog to test the trail and make sure that it is safe. The dog has more inherent knowledge about the area, all of his "ancestry knew" about the cold and the dangers of extreme cold. He also had a warm "natural covering" to keep him safe from the weather. The man was not used to the cold. He "was without imagination. He was quick and alert to the things of life, but only the things, and not the significances." He also was stubborn for his neglect to take advice.
Also, being a newcomer to the land, believing he could travel alone through the harsh winter results in nature not caring about how it will affect the man. For example, “But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers.(London 346)” This implies that the dog leaves the man once it finds out that the man perished due to the extreme conditions. This also demonstrates that the dog moved on once man had given up on himself, and the dog did not even care about the man, like how the dog represents nature being careless towards man. The dog is the fundametal of the story because it represents nature.It shows how life can be cruel and unfair because it is an obstacle that not everyone can overcome. Nature is an obstacle in life, and sometimes, people can not go against it and will have to find a way to overcome it,
The character sits in the woods, cold and shivering in the dark, and he builds a fire for self-preservation from the cold-wooded climate. The only sound he hears are the cries of the coyotes whose “cries seemed to have no origin other than the night itself” (13-14). The figurative language used helps to show the desolation the man is facing. The man fell asleep with his “hands up before him like a dozing penitent”(30-31), which suggests that he was feeling some degree of guilt or responsibility for the wolf’s death. This shows the reader that the man wants to bury the wolf out of reverence and appreciation of it’s
Another way it thinks that the author has set-up a man and an animal as competitors is to show how similar things a human would do like an animal if put in such a situation such as high winds, predators, and a constant danger of frostbite, a human would only care about three things, food, shelter and water like an animal. With the only source of food, a human would resort to savage ways so similar to the ways of a polar bear as the story states, “without an instant 's hesitation the man hurled his spear” (p. 164) and when “with a growl of rage, the bear tore it loose and charged upon the man” (p. 164). This shows that when a human is exposed to this type of environment, they would kill for food without
This causes him to commit significant errors as he walks through the Yukon. He doesn't permit the extremely plausible picture of him freezing or dying of hypothermia alter his journey. His absence of premonition and imagination is essential to the pomposity in plain view and his treatment of his husky serves to underline a longing to control nature. His arrogance is rebuffed in the story as he comes to understand that he, at last, must choose the option to give into
Buck had to persevere through many changes in his dog sledding career. He had to start this life and happened to know nothing of it. Buck did not know what snow was so he started as a laughable dog. He had to learn the laws of claw and fang.
In the story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, there are three principal themes. They are respecting nature, and considering results of actions. The main theme, or universal truth, is heeding warnings. The themes are shown through the character and his actions. The main character in the story had an attitude that prevented him from heeding internal and external warnings. He did not respect nature's power, and therefore he paid with his life.His attitude was arrogant and careless.
Why are children so loyal to their parents, even if their parents do not meet the moral standards of the child? Throughout the text of “Barn Burning”, Sarty seems to have repetitive feelings of grief and despair, yet he hesitates to out his father for his crimes. He hates his father’s crimes and his father’s way of life. Yet, Sarty is hesitant to out his father for his crimes. Mainly because he hopes his father will change, he fears his father will harm him physically or emotionally, and he places a priority on his family’s wellbeing before his own.
First, I am going to analyze the dog’s relationship with the man. the man is on his way to meet the boys with his only companion, a wolf dog which represents the bond we have with nature. The dog relies on the man to provide warmth by fire and the man needs the dog for his instincts. I believe the that since it is a wolf dog it has both traits as a wild wolf and a domesticated dog. It is like a gateway between humanity and nature which allows us to be a part of it. The dog never left the man’s side because he needed him. The man however, the attempted to kill the dog to spare his life. The man also sent the dog across the lake knowing that the dog’s instincts could get him across. The man heavily relied on the dog for his survival and was willing to sacrifice him for the man’s
In "To Build a Fire," Jack London expresses his perspective of the multitude of greenhorns who flocked to the yukon in a rush for gold. It is evident that he believed that these newcomers were too inexperienced and blinded by gold fever to survive the trip. Like many of them, "the Man" is driven by his own foolish ego to act irrationally and to not follow wise advice. Though his consience continually nags at him, his ego-driven way of thought keeps pushing him blindly forward. The Man is not only representative of other fortune hunters like himself, but he also repersents every person on this planet. All of us, at some point in time, pushed our own consience aside and followed our own selfish ego.
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 begin with, the man was new to the land and the winters that occurred every year. The brevity of his acquaintance with the land combined with his lack of imagination cause him to be completely ignorant. A normal man with a healthy imagination would have thought about the multitude of situations that could play out if he left the well-known path and set out on his own. He would have been worried about running into dangerous wild life- such as a bear. That alone might have kept a normal man from setting off into the unknown, especially by himself. Most men would not even have thought twice about setting off alone in a new place, especially
I picked To Build a Fire because I like adventure stories. It seemed that's the man was a newcomer to Yukon territory in Canada, and he didn't expect this severe frost. So he wasn't prepared for the terrible drop in colds, which was more than 75 degrees below zero, and also had no experience in the country climate. At last, he succeeded to reached his destination with his dog.
Fire prevention is a term being heard more and more today in America. It is starting to become a standard in today’s fire departments. Fire has the ability to keep us warm and also has the ability to make us homeless. As we grow as community and the technology changes, Fire Prevention needs to be made more of a necessity in our homes today. More homes are being built out of lighter material along with being built closer and closer together. Each can lead to extreme destruction, homes being lost, people being displaced, and even death. Why should we not protect homes and defend them against an enemy that can attack at any minute? Fire prevention needs to start in the home and then be carried onward in our lives. There are very