To Build a Fire: Revealing the Man

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

     To Build a Fire is a story is a perfect example of the writing genre Naturalism. It contains elements like survival depends on instinct, nature is impersonal, man lacks free choice, and heredity and environment direct and influence our lives. In the story nature is the antagonist and is very impersonal, as it is in life. The dog

Jack London, a 20th century author, is famous for novel The Call of the Wild and short story To Build a Fire. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, was originally published in 1903, but it is still being printed today. The novel tells the tale of Buck, and his transition from house dog to a sled dog who works in the Yukon Territory. On the other hand, To Build a Fire, also by Jack London, was published in 1908, and is about a man and his dog who are traveling in the Yukon alone. Because of amateur mistakes, the man ends up freezing to death. While Call of the Wild and To Build a Fire both share the same setting, and feature characters in similar situations, they are quite different in terms of the main character and the relationship

A good writer’s depiction of setting positions the reader right into the story. In "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, the setting plays a significant role throughout the entire short story.  London uses certain techniques to establish the atmosphere of the story.  By introducing his readers to the setting, prepares them for a tone that is depressed and frightening.  Isolated by the hostile environment of the Yukon in sub-freeing temperatures, a man falls victim to the unrelenting and unforgiving power of nature, London shows us how the main character of the story is completely unaware of his surroundings. The only world the man is truly accustomed to is his own. Never being exposed to such a harsh climate draws one to conclude that the

Dogs and man have been coexisting for centuries in many different settings, both welcoming and harsh. To Build a Fire, written by Jack London, shows the thoughts of man while trying to survive in the bleak Alaskan cold. In the Call of the Wild, London embraces the instincts of sled dogs in a masterful depiction of the Alaskan wilderness. To Build a Fire and the Call of the Wild have many similarities in design but they do also have prominent differences.

As we read Jack London’s The Call of The Wild and To Build A Fire, we interpreted that the books have a few comparisons, but differ at the same time. Both of the books are based on the Yukon during the gold rush, and they both persevere with the situations they are given. The second similarity between the two is that in both novels, they involve the sled dogs. In To Build A Fire, we saw that the man was on an adventure and he needed to build fires to survive, but he did not succeed. In The Call of The Wild, we got to see the growth in Buck as he eventually became a strong sled dog. The differences in these examples is that in The Call of The Wild, Buck has a good ending to life, but the man does not.

In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, London describes a man’s tragic journey with his dog through the bitter Yukon. This journey ends in the death of the man as his careless decisions finally results in his downfall, however; his companion, the dog, is able to survive. London uses the dog in this story as to embody the natural survival instincts that the protagonist lacks. The dog portrays the role of the companion throughout the man’s journey.

Jack London's to build a fire illustrates strong forms of naturalism in the journey of a man and his dog through frozen tundra of the Yukon valley. The story tells the tale of a newcomer to the Yukon as he travels an a cold early morning. He was forewarned of the danger of traveling alone but chooses to regardless. This is simply because “he was without imagination”(3), meaning he was aware that it was cold and he was supposed to travel with a group, but he lacked the imagination to realize why that was important to know. This example of man's stubbornness reflects the naturalism archetype of man versus self.

Jack London composed "To Build a Fire," the tragic story of a man's battle to defeat the force of nature in the most extraordinary temperatures. All through his voyage along the trail in the Yukon, he belittles nature and overestimates himself. Very quickly his destiny is uncovered when London writes, "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" (977). The man is a chechaquo to the Yukon and he doesn't care to understand the threat of this voyage. Regardless of the man's carelessness, as a reader, hope is still alive that rescuers will save him.

“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

Jack London’s stories “To Build a Fire” and "Love of Life” can be summarized in a short précis’s. "Love of Life” is a story about a man abandoned in the Yukon by his partner Bill after he sprained his ankle. Along the way, the man struggles with natures forces, hunger and humanity are sacrificed in an attempt to survive its dangerous territory. Towards the end the man is crawling, his knees are bloody stumps, he is powered only by his will to live. A wolf follows him, too sick to hunt; it limps after the man hoping for him to die. The man makes the choice to kill the wolf, sinking his teeth into its neck for an hour and a half, and later wriggles on to a beach where he is spotted by a ship’s crew and lives on. “To Build a Fire” is the story

John London uses realism, naturalism and irony on his story "To Build A Fire". This story narrates the story of a men in the middle of the Yukon Trail, London narrates how a man is trying to get to the fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. The man was hoping to find some gold and that's what lead him to his own tragedy.

     The story is one of the main aspects. Now it starts out like this. The man is traveling part of the Yukon Territory, He is looking for a way to get out logs in the stpring from the islands in the Yukon, but the weather is very harsh and he has trouble doing his job. The man later begins to freeze to death, and he tries to make a fire but he doesn’t and he then at the end tries to fall asleep and die.

“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.

I picked To Build a Fire because I like adventure stories. It seemed that's the man was a newcomer to Yukon territory in Canada, and he didn't expect this severe frost. So he wasn't prepared for the terrible drop in colds, which was more than 75 degrees below zero, and also had no experience in the country climate. At last, he succeeded to reached his destination with his dog.