Essay about To Build A Fire: Theme

The ambulance came to pick him up though he was perfectly capable of walking, and so that’s what he did. He walked into the back of the ambulance and he must have been a little delirious from the fever because he swore he saw some snow

Later, it was realized that there was no record of the man coming into the

The man is in a very dangerous predicament when, “it is 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire.” He works tremendously hard to build his fire and at first it was perfect. His chances of survival were high but then, “High up in the tree one branch dropped its load of snow. This fell on the branches beneath. This process continued, spreading through the whole tree. The snow fell without warning upon the

The next day he went back and he saw someone. The person was a man, he called to the man, but

The man was given advice from an “old-timer” that it is unwise to travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below zero but the man smiled and ignored the warning determined to make his journey (London 382). Because of his ignorance the un-named protagonist arrogantly thought of the “old-timer” as acting womanish, strongly believing that any man who was a man could travel alone (London 382). The man would rather listen to himself than the wise words of someone who is more experienced in this type of terrain. Because the man had no previous personal experience traveling in the Yukon in such cold, he was unable to determine the severity of the journey he was about to take. He did not understand how hostile nature can be and his disdainful attitude toward it’s forces exemplifies that. At the beginning of the story, cold made no impression on the man. “He perceived it as something weak that it was easy to overcome. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero” (London 377). As the story progressed, the cold started to wear at the man, inching it’s

As he laid, hands and feet latched to the cold, steel table, he desperately wished someone would find him. His entire abdominal cavity was convulsing in pain

At first he thought he was hallucinating the cabin because he couldn’t see why anyone would want to live on a freezing mountain in the middle of nowhere. As he came closer he realized that it definitely wasn’t just a hallucination and also that there might be some kind of food inside. Blinded with happiness a his discovery he ran to the cabin not noticing the claw marks and vicious scratches on the walls and door leading to a mound of snow which was were what was left of the cabins previous owners body now rested.

once warm skin. His eyes dull focusing on nothing but the task at hand. It was getting closer to

He could smell blood, but had no idea it was his. Everything was in dull motion. His partially impaired eyes saw men and women dressed in light blue gowns trying to hold him down. Memories are gone, not even happenings of hours before made themselves available in order to make sense of why there was all this clutter and clang as someone was tirelessly trying to remove the cold metal he could feel close to his beating heart. It was all a mystery.

resting against the tree, the cold did not seem to affect him, nothing seemed to

In the story To Build a Fire written by Jack London, a man and a dog travel together through the Yukon in freezing temperatures to get to a cabin where the man’s friends are. The significant events in the story include the man falling into a creek, the man’s fire going out and the dog leaving the mans body reveal the authors’ own understanding of how nature and humanity interact. The use of third person point of view and symbolism work together in order to help readers understand the themes that nature is indifferent to living beings and that you shouldn 't ignore the advice of others.

In Jack London’s short stories “To Build a Fire,” a man in the Yukon freezes to death. His unfortunate fate could have been avoided if he simply would have respected the power of nature and recognized the warning signs.

The earth has been around for far longer than humans have. Mankind has grown to think that they’re better than everything, but we are wrong, nature always wins and mankind shouldn’t fight it. Over hundreds of years’ humans have evolved and created an incredible life where we have everything we need or can get it. We don’t have to go out and hunt for food anymore we have stores, we also have homes with running water, AC, and heat. We have grown so accustom to this life style that if it got all taken away tomorrow, we wouldn’t know how to survive. Mankind is losing its survival instincts, which Jack London tries to bring to our attention in the short story, To Build a Fire.

hat winter, it felt like every time I saw my father, the sun cast off just a little more warmth than it had the day before. I don 't remember a gray day whe I saw him. Once it had snowed the night before, and getting to his apartment to longer than normal, as the buses inched their way past snowbanks and awkwardly parked cars. But the sun made everything glisten, and the snow still had a pure look to it, which I knew would be gone by the following morning.

The ice crawled over the man. It sucked him down until he lay flat on the stone floor. It formed a coffin over him. His breathing became shallow. The sweat on his forehead froze there, forming a false crown. The smoke slithered unto the ice coffin. The ice moved away from the man’s face