Jack London's To Build A Fire

Within To Build a Fire, the gold-seeker or man who is portrayed as the main character in the story is appearing to have difficulties with what nature or the landscape was throwing at him. Alike in both reality and the story, the freezing cold temperatures were a constant threat to the gold-seekers who may have been unprepared for what they might have expected. The reality part of the extreme cold is adequate to how the extreme cold was described in the story because in both references it was in the negatives somewhere between -20 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature and well below -50 degrees Fahrenheit. Besides the extreme cold, both the reality and the story comparison can be

Although the circumstances nature thrust at the man were immortaly dangerous, the man’s deficit of imagination and negligence innately led to his death. Psycologically, the man was no match for the treacherous conditions around

The narrator negated the advice given to him that, "no man should travel alone in the Yukon when the temperature is sixty degrees below zero." He failed to heed to the advice because he thought of how he had saved himself from the accident, and had built the fire alone. This was pride ruling him not knowing that, he was risking his life. His arrogance made him believe that he can make it all alone, and alive. The main character’s poor decisions led to his death. He was not compatible with the cold weather, and thus could not make it alone as his pride, and arrogance made him believe. His arrogance caused his death, because he imagined that he had the ability to travel alone in the harsh cold weather, and ignored the advice given to him. This instance of the narrator dying, because he thought

In this case, the fire could represent the intense anger, the cat feels towards the narrator for destroying their peaceful family life. The cat has also sensed the character change of the narrator, how the once innocent and kind man, who took care of a lonely cat, had turned into an alcoholic, mistreating his family, attempting to kill the cat and even taking the life of his wife. Example 2: '' The fury of a demon instantly possessed me.'' (ln. 51-52).

But, we realize almost immediately, the man has only a superficial knowledge of the Arctic. As he stands on a bank of the Yukon about to plunge into an almost absolute wilderness, he has little or no understanding either of his immense isolation relative to his surroundings or of the extreme danger posed by the cold snap. But all of this, London comments at the beginning of the third paragraph, "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." Thus, the man also knows, in addition to the fact the sun will reappear, that it is fifty degrees below zero, but he does not know the meaning of this fact, it portends death for anyone who makes himself vulnerable to its ability to kill. "Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head."

'To build a fire' is a story about a man travels in the Yukon with his wolf-dog through a hostile environment.

On an extremely cold winter day (−75 °F or −59 °C), a man, who remains unnamed throughout the story, and his native wolf-dog go on the Yukon Trail after being warned of the dangers of traveling alone in extreme weather conditions by an old man from Sulfur Creek. With nine hours of hiking ahead of him, the man is expecting to meet his associates ("the boys") at a camp in Henderson Creek by that evening. The man is accompanied only by his dog, whose instincts tell it that the weather is too cold for traveling. However, the weather does not deter the man, a relative newcomer to the Yukon, even though the water vapor in the man's exhaled breaths and the saliva from the tobacco he is chewing have frozen his mouth shut. It is here where London's use of symbolism of "heat (sun-fire-life) and cold (darkness-depression-death)" immediately

In 'To Build a Fire,' the man's antagonist is nature: London displays the man's journey as restricted by external forces. First, the temperature of the tundra is seventy-five-below zero

This is when he realized he made the foolish mistake of going on his journey alone, defying what the old man had advised him. The man had also many other mistakes throughout his

Imagery is another important element which London uses to illustrate and emphasize his theme. In “To Build a Fire” Earl Labor sees the “mood and atmosphere, which is conveyed through repetitive imagery of cold and gloom and whiteness,” as being “the key to the story’s impact” (63). London does rely heavily on imagery to set the mood of the story, and in this way he draws a picture of the harsh environment that his character must endure. London uses imagery with such skill that the reader can almost feel the deadly cold of the environment and can almost hear the “sharp, explosive crackle” when the man’s spit would freeze in mid-air (119). Through the use of such vivid imagery, London guides the reader toward the realization of the story’s theme; the reader can visualize the man “losing in his battle with the frost” and therefor can picture man in his conflict with a cruel and uncaring universe (128). Symbolism is also an important element in “To Build a Fire”. David Mike Hamilton’s criticism, he says “the fire symbolizes life as does the white snow that falls at the beginning of the story.” He also views “the dark point in the midst of the stamped snow, foretelling the end of the fire, and thus of life” (2). I strongly agree with Hamilton’s criticism; “the dark point in the midst of the stamped snow” because it not only foretells the end of the fire but of the end of life itself.

As stated in the story, “the animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgement (Perkins 124).” Again, adding more to the evidence of the man’s disregard for the danger that he faced in the harsh cold environment.

The story “To Build a Fire” written by Jack London has two nearly identical versions published in 1902 and 1908 respectively. The latter is better-known and more thought-provoking because of the protagonist’s death. To begin with, the journey takes place on a cold winter day in Klondike, consists of a man and his dog. The man is ignorant of the extreme coldness and feels confident about travelling alone at fifty degrees below zero. However, he breaks through a thin skin of ice unexpectedly and wets himself halfway to the knees. In order to dry his feet, the man builds a fire, only to have it extinguished by a pile of snow unloaded from a tree. He tries to set up another fire, yet all attempts has failed. The man panics and strives to unfreeze his body by running. Not surprisingly, his efforts are useless, and the man dies of hypothermia at last. The author effectively supports the central conflict of man versus nature and gives hints about the man’s death as resolution by using appropriate title, descriptive setting, and a large amount of foreshadowing.

When the man refers to this fire, the boy often imagines it as an actual flame, as shown by his final conversation with his father. “You have to carry the fire. I don’t know how to. Yes you do. Is it real? The fire? Yes it is. Where is it? I don’t know where it is. Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.” (pg. 279). He also uses the fire as a symbol of recognition of the other good guys, asking them “Are you carrying the fire? Am I what? Carrying the fire. You’re kind of weirded out, aren’t you? No. Just a little. Yeah. That’s okay. So are you? What, carrying the fire? Yes. Yeah, we are.” (pg. 286). This symbol reveals that the boy needs a motive which is provided by carrying the fire to his destination. It also shows the skill with which the father has when dealing with his son and his pessimistic

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.

One of the most prominent facets of the man’s personality is his overwhelming arrogance. The man is a newcomer to the Yukon territory or “chechaquo”, and is inexperienced in the customs of the land. The man believes that he will be unaffected by the harsh conditions and does not seem to grasp the grave reality of the situation. This characteristic is displayed early in the story, when the man rebuffs the old timer’s warning advice and later mocks the old man and his caution of the danger of traveling in the freezing temperatures, especially without a partner. “Those old-timers are rather womanish, some of them, he thought” (1210). Despite the likelihood that the old-timer has spent his lifetime in the area, the man considers his advice to be weak and believes, arrogantly, that he is superior in his masculinity and abilities. Eventually, the man realizes that he should have listened to the words of the old man in Sulphur Creek. Further, the man’s arrogance is displayed again when he ignores the warning signs that the environment is not suitable for such a long solo trek. Despite the incredible cold, the man fails to comprehend just how miniscule he is compared to nature. “…the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all made no impression on the man” (1205). It is this arrogance that limits the man’s ability to grasp how insignificant his life is compared to the great power of