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To Build A Fire Conscience

Better Essays

Elizabeth Nevins
Engl 203 Section 506
Dr. Cooper
May/5/2015

Investigation of Conscience and Man's Psych in “To Build A Fire” The underlying themes of morality and importance of conscience in a time of desperation and trouble are intertwined in Jack London's work “To Build A Fire.” The idea of instinct over intellect plays a huge role in this naturalistic story, but perhaps the greater influence in the story is the power of morality in the final breaths of life. Through the parallelism of existentialism and humanism, the battle with religious sin that makes us human, the unveiling of the American dream in context to man's wants, and man's final judgment, London weaves a story of survival that explores the persona of man in the midst of …show more content…

It is about much more than a man battling nature, not realizing the hidden dangers that awaited just beyond what his senses told him. His senses told him one thing, his mind another. To proceed without heeding the warnings offered by his senses means his mind was accepting assumptions that were not valid in a world that was not merely quantitatively different, but qualitatively different. In religious texts, God creates his own fire for us and within us. Perhaps London purposefully weaved a religious subplot into the short story. Christians believe that in the presence of God there is a fire and “the Lord Himself is the wall of fire that protects the inhabitants from danger”(Cox 275). "To Build a Fire" is a gripping tale of human frailty and mortality. It speaks volumes of allegorical warnings to anyone in urban churches. Like the man in “To Build A Fire,” many Christians think we are in a beautiful and friendly habitat; but we forget that it is ever-changing and quite deadly. Indeed, already we have stepped into the icy water, and many of us have yet to realize the serious nature of the threat. Secondly, like the man in the Yukon, many churches are "without imagination" of how we are linked to our surroundings (London 2). Like that man, we tend to act with the naïve notion that we will be able, rather quickly, to get back on track. In “To Build A Fire,” the dog “[whines] loudly. And still later it [creeps] close to …show more content…

American freedom and individuality have often been expressed in, and “celebrated by stories of exploration, adventure, enterprise, and the pursuit of gain: the conquest of the prairie, the settling of the West, the taming of the wilderness, the gold rush, and the mastery of nature through science, industry, and technology” (Bjorkland 3). Jack London’s story offers us a picture of one such fortune-hunting, rugged individual. London took part in the Klondike gold rush, and though he failed as a miner, he struck gold with stories drawing on the places and people he encountered during those hope-filled and brutal times in the Northwest Territory. In “To Build A Fire,” the man's passion to explore and make a better life for himself was destroyed by the ultimate fate of nature. Jim Cullen explores the meaning of the American Dream, or rather the several American Dreams that have both reflected and shaped American identity from the Pilgrims to the present in his book, “The American Dream.” Cullen notes that the United States, unlike most other nations, defines itself “not on the facts of blood, religion, language, geography, or shared history, but on a set of ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and consolidated in the Constitution” (Cullen 19). At the core of these ideals lies the ambiguous concept of the American Dream, a concept that for better or worse has proven to

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