James Baldwin 's The Fire Next Time, By Ralph Ellison

James E. Faust once said, “Unfortunately, some of our greatest tribulations are the result of our own foolishness and weakness and occur because of our own carelessness or transgression.” In To Build a Fire by Jack London, a man is on a journey to get to his camp but the problem is that it is seventy degrees below zero, and he is travelling only with a dog to help him. The man, unfortunately, dies at the end of the story from frostbite after falling into an almost frozen creek and not being able to make a fire in order to warm himself up. One cause of his death is the man’s arrogance. The second cause of his death is his carelessness and hasty decisions. The man makes terrible decisions leading to his death, it is not nature’s fault.

This is a very important part of the book because it shows the reader that the

Throughout his essay, Baldwin makes numerous use of italicize words or sentences to state a strong fact that he agrees with or deems important to readers. By italicizing that “Negroes want to be treated like men”, Baldwin clearly states his position. The extent, to which he uses this writing technique, signifies that he not only speaks for himself but also for his Community, Harlem. Aside from using italics Baldwin makes use of lengthy sentences, that are sustain with breaks such as hyphens and dashes, and a tone of sarcasm to affirm his position in the matter. He goes into hesitations when writing the lengthy sentences by including the dashes, which suggests that he is not only sustaining his position but also indicating that he has an experienced idea of what he is expressing. Baldwin`s degree of sarcasm in the opening paragraphs, is used to give an idea of how poorly their environment is but more over to show the insignificance that their environment has on others and their lack of attempt to “rehabilitate” it.

The differences between the world then and now are that there are most definitely more blacks now then there was in the period when Baldwin wrote the essay for starters. Baldwin experience a lot of discrimination since “the first day [he] arrived, and the children shout Neger! Neger! as [he] walk[ed] along the streets. As of today you may not encounter that as common as it was before as the people there probably didn’t see black people as often. The society has been greatly altered since then and the coming to accept the presence of blacks, though there is a few still that don’t. Next there is also the evolution of black history in white lives now as Cole said he I sat down to [eat] lunch at the Römerhof restaurant one afternoon—that day, all the customers and staff were white—the music playing overhead was Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” The world is different from when Baldwin wrote the essay because of the fact blacks then were not allowed the

Baldwin uses the experiences he faced in New Jersey and the personal relationship with his father to show ethos throughout his essay. At one point in his essay, Baldwin finds himself in New Jersey where segregation still exist. “I learned in New Jersey…one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people” (68). Here Baldwin expresses how circumstances in New Jersey were like at the time, but also portrays the way people were viewed based on the color of their skin. Baldwin later goes on to mention the year he spent in New Jersey, was the year in which “[he] first contracted some dread, chronic disease” (70). This “disease” Baldwin contracted is not an actual disease, but more of a way in which he begins to feel and see the world around him differently. The disease Baldwin is referring to throughout his entire essay is bitterness. Living in New Jersey caused Baldwin to gain the sense of bitterness that his father had lived with during his life. Baldwin’s bitterness comes from the way he was specifically treated in New Jersey and how he allowed that feeling to affect his behaviors. Baldwin specifically mentions the moment in New Jersey where the white waitress approaches him at the restaurant stating, “We don’t serve Negroes here” (71). At this point we begin to see Baldwin as he acts out in violence by stating, “I wanted her to come close enough for me to get her neck

This is shown when the author states, “Nor did ordinary Negroes like the growing influx of whites toward Harlem after sundown, flooding the little cabarets and bars where formerly only colored people laughed and sang, and where now the strangers were given the best ringside tables to sit and stare at the Negro customers--like amusing animals in a zoo.” The author uses the article to give a brief history of a historical event that they were personally part of which starts with whites moving into Harlem. After they moved into Harlem, white people began to take over predominately African American clubs. Instead of completely banning African Americans from the clubs, they would watch them as though they were a source of entertainment. By informing readers of this situation, they can realize how simplistic life is in today’s society; people are able to note that they had been taking their life for granted. The author does this in order to make people appreciate the struggles that he once went

The idea of relating public and private events in Baldwin’s own experiences is instituted later in the essay in order to transition from narrative to analysis. Baldwin started telling a story about when he lived in New Jersey before the time of his father’s death. He talked about his personal treatment by white people in the south, a first hand account of the racism of that particular era. He learned of the hostility of the Jim Crow Laws inflicted on African Americans during that time period. His story was analogous to nearly all African Americans at that point. When Baldwin lived in New Jersey, he became exposed to the racism of the south that occurred in restaurants and diners. During one of those experiences he wrote, “I

Baldwin describes the whites as believing the blacks are inferior to them and that the white presumptions of black people have defined the place of blacks in society for many years. He states that “[his nephew was] born into a

Baldwin determines that violence and racial separatism are not acceptable solutions for achieving “power”. Baldwin believes that black people will only be able to achieve lasting influence in America if they love and accept white people. In contrast, writing 52 years after Baldwin, Coats tells his own son to “struggle” but not

Baldwin questions problems in faith and how to address them, as well as continuing his insistence that relations with God must be forged in the fires of repentance and humility. To question faith only to rise from the temptation causes one to become stronger, but one must also repent in order to become holy (Bloom). In The Fire Next Time, He writes that “It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being… must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian Church”(The Fire Next Time, 42). The Christian church is not perfect, and through questioning religion and determining one’s faith one can create a connection with God. He questions the necessity of the existence of

Realism is defined as “an attempt to make art and literature resemble life.” Realism generally tires to reflect real life, as previously stated, without, however the added negativity and sense of hopelessness that Naturalism does. Unlike realism which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies it is a philosophical position. For naturalistic writers, since human beings are, as Emile Zola puts it, "human beasts," characters can be studied through the relationships they have to their surroundings. Below are three analyses of three separate texts, discussing whether they are: realistic or naturalistic, each text’s central ideas, and what the writer wanted the reader to realize about reality.

“To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a short story. The story begins with an unnamed man that is traveling in the Yukon with a dog. It is very cold outside and he shouldn’t travel alone in this weather but he does anyway. He is said to have no imagination and thinks he is invincible. It is so cold that when the man spits it becomes frozen before it hits the ground.

American short stories have a great relationship between themes of a story to American social concerns. Writers of American short stories often mention the concern or get the point that there trying to say about America across. For this they are given the name of “American short stories”. Without a proper display of America these would just be short stories rather than American short Stories. The writing of these types of authors has a real life concern that they want to spread with people and make the concerns a real thing rather than just an idea. Many of these concerns in short stories revolve around death and different occurrences of death. Whether the death is cause by another person, group of people, nature or by oneself, the concern

Nature is depicted in various ways throughout literature. It can be described as full of hope and beauty as well as an unstoppable force that always results in the downfall of life. The latter is a more accurate depiction for “The Law of Life” and “To Build a Fire” written by Jack London. In these short stories, he gives a more pessimistic description of nature. Humans rely on nature to survive. Some people accept this, but others are too proud. The fact is that individual life does not continue forever, but nature lives on.

Not very many people have looked death in the eye. But, when a person does it is something can have a drastic effect on them. Some people are able to survive their deaths, however some end up passing on and are not able to turn their lives around. However, in the short story To Build a Fire by Jack London the man in the story does not survive his dance with death. In the story, the man, whom never gets a name, embarks on a very cold, very long journey to a mining camp. On his journey, he has to stop several times and build a fire in order to keep himself warm and keep himself going throughout his journey to the camp. He has a dog lead him, and then he must save the dog as it fell through the ice. Soon after, he