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Essay about to build a fire

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Interpretation “To Build a Fire”
In the story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, a man is travelling through the klondike in Alaska to find his friends, "the boys". Because the man is only quick and alert to the things of life and not the significance, he finds himself in some very bad circumstances. The man experiences several instances of bad luck such as getting wet up to his knees, the spruce tree dumping snow on his fire, and matches falling through his numb fingers and going out in the snow. I think that the central idea of "To Build a Fire" is to listen to your instincts and the “significances of life,” because they will help you when you find …show more content…

He knew that it was colder than fifty below zero when he tried to spit the juice from his chewing tobacco and it wasn't unable to clear his chin before it froze. "The result was that a crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasing it’s length on his chin." Several times he comments that the cold was making his hands and feet numbed, and frostbite was killing his cheeks. He thinks, "What were frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that was all..." The man also lost circulation in his hands when he took off his gloves. He rubbed his face and beat his hands, but this only temporarily brought back the circulation. His fingers "seemed remote from his body" because he could not move them. Earlier, he ignored an initial sign from nature with a submerged spring because he wanted to get to “the boys” by six. Not long after he stepped through the ice into knee deep freezing water. The most obvious clues that the man took in were internal. "He wondered whether his toes were warm or numb." When he tried to light his last fire, his flesh burned. He knew it was burning because "he could smell it". He didn't even feel his hands burning. The man thought that it was "curious that one should have to use his eyes to find where his hands were." Eventually, no amount of running or thrashing could have awaken feeling in his body.

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