The Importance Of Setting 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

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

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

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."

In the story “To Build A Fire” the climate is cold. “Before the coming of winter, the old-timer from Sulphur Creek had warned him that one should always travel in winter with a partner and that one should never attempt to travel alone in temperatures colder than fifty degrees below zero. In his ignorance, the tenderfoot had laughed at the old-timer’s advice. Caught in the bitter cold, he is made to realize

The temperature kept getting colder and the man could not feel parts of his body. He had tobacco in his mouth but the temperature was so cold that his mouth was iced shut and his saliva could not fall. “The result was a long piece of yellow ice hanging from his lips.” this shows how cold it is and that the temperature of frost was even worse. Everything was covered with multiple inches of snow and most of the lakes were frozen solid. However not all of the streams were solid. The man almost fell through several times and the dog did fall through once when it was forced to cross. The man successfully made a fire to warm them both up. However, when the man fell to his knees in a lake and he tried to make a fire; he failed. He tried twice to warm his frostbitten body, but did not

lead his readers to believe that the man will suffer a tragedy in the end

The setting of a story may have a great effect on the meaning of the story, as show in “To Build a Fire.” Lines 1-2 state, “Day had broken, cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey.” By reading this quote, readers may tell that this setting would not be a favorable place to live. Another example of the setting would be in line 14, “The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice.” From reading these examples of the setting, readers can tell more or less that this man must trust his instincts greatly because he went out in condtitions like these. The Elders of the village warned the man about going out into these kinds of conditions, nevertheless, the man chose to trust his instincts and go anyway. Jack London most likely used

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

It was nine o’clock in the morning and there was no sun insight and no clouds in the sky. “[The snow] was pure white… ice jams of the freeze –up had formed” (125-26). You can barely see the trail in the distance because there was many layers of

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

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.

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