The Characteristics Of A Man In Jack London's To Build A Fire

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

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.

If developed the right way, the setting can play an important role in a story like this. London builds his setting up quickly, within the first words of this story. The story is set in the wintertime with no sign of the sun, at the Yukon Trail. A deadly and extremely cold area in the country of Canada. In the story, the narrator states, “Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside

Some stories can have an emotional impact on readers, but every so often a story will reach out and help the reader escape into it. Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a fascinating story with a remarkably well described setting, and geographical descriptions of the surrounding Yukon areas. It portrays an overconfident man, whom because of his lack of intuition and stubbornness, succumbs to natures unforgiving climate.

In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the protagonist foremost values his pride, which leads to his demise. The story starts off with the protagonist taking a detour in the Yukon so that he could survey the trees in the area (he was doing this so that he could send logs down the river to the gold prospecting camp, where he would sell the wood to the prospectors for money). But, the protagonist’s pride blinds him from what could have and should have done to ensure his survival in the Yukon. About halfway through his journey, he accidentally breaks through the ice on the spring and his foot falls into the water. At the temperatures mentioned in the story (seventy below zero), if he did not dry himself properly, it could lead to serious frostbite and/or death. So, he was forced to build a fire, and the “fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had an accident: he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish” (London 8). The man keeps feeding the fire and gets ready to take his (frozen and potentially dangerous) footwear off, and feels content and a sense of satisfaction of disproving the old-timers. But, just as it seemed to be that the fire was stable and strong, snow that was on the branches of the spruce tree he was under fell

Story takes place in the Klondike. The main character used the landscape as a clue. He also used a faint line as his way back (Kreidler, Michele L). Since it’s snowy he leaves a trail behind him. He uses takes advantage of the landscape around him but relies on it for too long. “The man is a newcomer to the Klondike and is setting out from town to join his compatriots, referred to 'the boys' at a specified point on the Yukon River” (Kreidler, Michele L). He is new in the Klondike so this already shows that if he goes anywhere he is most likely getting lost. This foreshadows the death of the man. “London describes the traveler, "a newcomer in the land," as being unaware of "his frailty as a creature of temperature…able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold"” (Robert S. Puchalik). The man doesn’t know how frail the human body can be. The setting is important because if he knew the territory he was in he would probably have a higher chance of surviving. Klondike is where the man is currently staying. It is a safe zone for him because he has warmth. He is traveling to the Yukon River to meet his compatriots.

He pulls twigs from the nearby underbrush to feed the fire, but the resulting vibrations eventually cause the snow on the tree's loaded boughs to tumble down, extinguishing the flames and frightening the man for the first time. He gathers material for a new fire and lights it with great difficulty, burning himself with his matches in the process. But then he accidentally pokes everything apart and extinguishes the incipient flame while trying to remove a piece of moss. He seizes hold of the dog, planning to kill it and use the fresh carcass for warmth; however, he finds that he can neither draw his knife nor strangle the animal with his frozen hands. In a final desperate attempt to warm himself up, the man tries to run along the trail but repeatedly stumbles and falls. Finally understanding the truth of the wise man's warnings about the cold, the man succumbs to hypothermia and sleeps his way into death, imagining himself to be with "the boys" as they find his body the next

The words and phrases Jack London uses in To Build a Fire gives rich meaning to the story. The story covers a man's fatal journey through the Yukon wilderness with his dog. The further the reader goes into the story, the more the reader learns about the man's personality. The man is young and quite arrogant in his ability to survive in the extreme cold. In the end, the man's misjudgments lead to his early death.

The man knows the temperature is colder than 50 below; he has no experience traveling in such weather yet continues absentmindedly to meet ‘the boys’ at their camp in Henderson Creek. A dog followed at his heels, “It’s instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgement” (Anderson 28). The man was aware of the dangers of his trip, including thin ice skin hidden beneath pockets of sunken snow. Several times he avoids these traps wishing not to be delayed and even compels the dog to lead when he is unsure himself. The dog’s instinct screams no but the man shoves it forward anyway and the dog’s legs are soaked briefly before turning to ice. The dog quickly bites and licks at the ice to remove it from its fur. After a swift lunch and a small fire the dog again reminds the man of the dangers that lie ahead, “…it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold” (Anderson 30). Regretfully, the man saw no signs before falling through a pocket of snow and ice which left his feet wet. “He was angry and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his footgear” (Anderson 31). Ignorant to his surroundings, the man’s fire is put out when snow falls from the boughs of the spruce above his fire. He finally acknowledged

The short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London starts off with a man who travels to the Yukon, a major river in Alaska and western Canada, on an extremely cold winter day with a wolf dog. The man was a newcomer in the Yukon and this winter was going to be his first. The man is planning to meet a group of his friends at a camp by six o’clock. He plans on traveling alone with his wolf dog because he states that he is not fazed by the cold. An older timer on Sulphur Creek warns the man to not go into the wilder of Yukon on his own, but he refuses to listen and lets his ego get the best of him. So the man sets forth his journey with his dog and no other companion. As the days goes on and the weather grows colder, the ma realizes that his unprotected

“To Build a Fire” is a short story written by Jack London. It is viewed as a masterpiece of naturalist fiction. “To Build a Fire” features a miner who is traveling to the Yukon Territory with a dog as his companion. The miner is the protagonist and the dog companion is called the foil. The dog plays off of the traits of the protagonist. “The central motif of “To Build a Fire” concerns the struggle of man versus nature.” (Short Story Criticism) The most argued point in the short story is the reason of the protagonist death. “Some critics believe that it was his lack of intuition and imagination that lead to his death, while others say that he dies because of panic.” (Short Story Criticism) The protagonist in “To Build a Fire” struggles in

No matter what type of story you are reading, setting always plays a key element in producing the desired effect. Jack London's short story To Build A Fire provides an excellent example of this. In this story, a man hikes across a snow and ice covered plane towards the encampment where he is supposed to meet up with more travelers like himself. The setting of this story is one of the northernmost most areas of the earth, the Yukon. The man must hike across this area for approximately thirty-six miles before he reaches the camp at which he is expected. The constantly dropping temperature further complicates the man's hike. When he begins his journey at nine o'clock in the morning it is

“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.

Do you think you could survive the Yukon trail, a mile wide and three feet of ice, and just as many feet of snow, in weather colder than fifty below? The story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, is about a man who tried to take the Yukon trail and get to his friends with just a dog to guide him. He was told that no one has ever made the journey alone, yet he chose to take on the journey. Through the story the man faces many conflicts not only through himself in having too much pride, but also with the physical ones such as the cold which lead to his death. The main theme in the book is the man’s perseverance to try and survive. The man on the Yukon Trail has to show perseverance through the story even with the harsh weather and signs of bad events coming upon him. In his story “To Build a Fire,” Jack London discusses the theme of perseverance through two literary elements, conflict and foreshadowing.

“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 the sun.” Throughout Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” there is a sense of slow burning dread as readers are introduced to the man and his gradual, but inevitable death, brought upon by himself. London’s short story opens with the main character, a man, foolishly embarking on the long journey back to camp in the freezing Yukon, accompanied only by a husky mix. It is in this unforgivingly harsh weather that the man meets his fate, at his own hand. From the beginning of the story, the man displays flawed behaviors and personality traits that render him unable to survive on his solo journey in the Yukon, becoming his own worst enemy.