More handpicked essays just for you.
How to build a fire jack london character analysis essay
How to build a fire jack london character analysis essay
How to build a fire jack london character analysis essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In ‘To Build a Fire”, the author, Jack London creates a tale that reflects his voyage in the Klondike gold rush as a miner in the glacial and cold terrain of Alaska and Canada during 1897 to 1898. The short story is about an unnamed man who takes his own journey through the Yukon in Alaska, where the temperature is 75 degrees below zero. The man and his dog, a husky, set out for their journey on an exceeding cold and gray day. Although he never reaches his destination, the unnamed man faces many obstacles throughout his journey that portray the characteristics of a hero; this can be shown through his persistence, independence and knowledge. The unidentified man in the short story has a lot perseverance and determination to reach his final destination, which are two qualities found in heroes. In the exposition of the story, it is known that he steps away from the main trail and wanders off in the Yukon to meet the other miners on a fork of Henderson creek. On his nine-hour walk in the brutal weather, he hopes to find logs in the springs from the islands. The man is a chechaquo, which means that he is a new-comer to the land and does not know what to expect because it is his first winter. During his trip, he is well aware that it is cold out, but he underestimates the weather and does not think much of it. In the short story, the narrator states, “But all of this – the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of the sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, the strangeness and the weirdness of it all – made no impression on the man” (Kass, et al. 68). No matter what the conditions were, the man did not let it distract him and he decided to persist through it all. A hero will take any situation and work with it, all of t... ... middle of paper ... ... weather, and the unnamed man would have had many stories to tell. The native husky would have been seen as a hero as well. If the unnamed man would have reached the creek, he would have inspired many miners. The dog would have been seen as the best companion. ”The dog represents pure instinct, a trait necessary for survival in the harsh Yukon” (“To Build”). Works Cited Kass, Amy A., Leon Kass, and Diana Schaub. "To Build a Fire." What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2011. 67-80. Print. Study Guide. What So Proudly We Hail. Web. 09 Feb. 2014. . "To Build a Fire Characters." Study Guides & Essay Editing. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014. .
McCandless is the ideal tragic hero because he was born with both intelligence and integrity. He has integrity because even though he was born into an upper class family, he ends up giving all his riches away for his “Great Alaskan adventure”. McCandless had no desire for luxuries and he did not bel...
In "To Build a Fire," Jack London expresses his perspective of the multitude of greenhorns who flocked to the yukon in a rush for gold. It is evident that he believed that these newcomers were too inexperienced and blinded by gold fever to survive the trip. Like many of them, "the Man" is driven by his own foolish ego to act irrationally and to not follow wise advice. Though his consience continually nags at him, his ego-driven way of thought keeps pushing him blindly forward. The Man is not only representative of other fortune hunters like himself, but he also repersents every person on this planet. All of us, at some point in time, pushed our own consience aside and followed our own selfish ego.
Christopher McCandless had always admired the works of Jack London. He even went as far as naming Jack London “king”. McCandless relished the naturalisitc elements of London’s writings, elements that he chose to ignore in his own life. Jack London often depicted men as being controlled by their environment and being unable to withstand any heavy circumstances. He depicted themes about the frailty of man and man’s inability to overcome nature. But McCandless clearly did not take away any of the valuable lessons from these stories. He hailed London as “king” but never truly learned from London’s stories, dying in a tragically ironic way when he came to meet the same fate as the protagonist in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”. Christopher McCandless
No matter how hard people try, nature always wins, however there are those rare exceptions. Unfortunately, this is not one of those stories. In Jack London’s To Build A Fire, a young adventurer learns the hard way that nature is unpredictable, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. the theme of this story is that nature is no force to reckon with
Jack London has written a classic short story in the 1908 version of "To Build a Fire." This is the classic story of man fighting nature. In most genres (e.g. movies, novels, short stories) the main character comes out on top, however unlikely that is. Jack London takes literary naturalism and shows the reader how unmerciful nature is. Much like Stephen Crane in "The Open Boat," in which the one of the characters dies, London doesn't buy into that "has to have a good ending" contrivance. Through analysis of two London's letters (to R.W. Gilder and Cloudesly Johns) these two versions of "To Build a Fire" come alive with new meaning. Although there are many differences on the surface, both stories use his philosophy as expressed to Johns and both teach a moral lesson, one which will not soon be forgotten: "Never travel alone."
In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, an unknown man is traveling alone in the extremely dangerous weather of seventy-five degrees below zero along Yukon Trail. Despite being warned about the dangers; he was bent on reaching his destination at the boy’s camp on Henderson Creek. Nevertheless, he tried many things to help keep his body warm but everything he tried failed. Close to death, he finally realized that it was impossible to survive this journey without a partner. The theme illustrates that sometimes it’s best to listen to others advice because everyone isn’t able to defeat nature.
A tragic hero is defined as a person of high social rank, who has a tragic flaw or flaws that lead to their downfall. These heroes’ downfalls are usually either complete ruin or death. Tragic heroes face their downfall with courage and dignity. While many characters in Julius Caesar could fit these conditions, the person who fits the role of a tragic hero the best is Marcus Brutus. Brutus develops into a tragic hero throughout the play, and this is shown though his qualifications of a tragic hero, his high status, his tragic flaws, and his courage in the face of his death.
In “To Build A Fire”, the main conflict throughout is man versus nature although it would be inaccurate to say that nature goes out of its way to assault the man. The fact of the matter is, nature would be just as cold without the man's presence regardless of him being there .The environment as a whole is completely indifferent to the man, as it frequently is in naturalist literature. The bitter environment does not aid him in any way, and it will not notice if he perishes. In the same way, the dog does not care about the man, only about itself. Ironically enough though, as the man was dying he was getting upset toward the dog because of its natural warmth, the instincts that it had, and its survival skills and those were the elements that the man lacked for survival. It is ironic that the man had to die in order to find out that man's fragile body cannot survive in nature's harsh elements, regardless of a human’s natural over-confidence and psychological strength.
Jack London creates a setting that is hostile and “cold”. The story is set in the wilderness of the frozen Yukon, during the harsh winter months, when “there was no sun nor hint of sun” in the sky. The character that London introduces is isolated from the world. “The man” doesn't have a companion; only the dog that follows him.
An Analysis of Jack London's To Build a Fire. In her cultural criticism of Jack London's "To Build a Fire", Jill Widdicombe explores the question of whether the story's protagonist might have perished from the extreme cold of the Klondike winter even if with a traveling companion. She describes the brutality of the winter weather and, alluding to the man's confidence in his ability to survive the weather, describes it as "behavior most of us can understand" - especially if we are accustomed to warmer surroundings. She states: "the extreme cold of frosty landscapes--or "The White Silence", as London describes it--is so quiet and abstract that it does not immediately appear to be lethal".
Jack London was an American man of many talents, which included being an author, journalist and a social activist, despite being minimally educated. Nonetheless, he was undoubtedly most recognized for his short stories and novels that fixated on the harsh, cold climates that Mother Nature crafted. London focused on a deeper level of the wild and the literary devices in his work are littered throughout every one of his novels and short stories, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, as well as “To Build a Fire.”
Jack London’s message in the writing “To Build a Fire” is to never underestimate the power of nature and following Experience would actually show someone that instincts should be trusted over ego and pride. London is known for being a Naturalist, naturalists are people that practice nature in literature or writings, naturalists believed that one’s surviving methods highly involve using one 's instinct. London’s “cautionary realist/ naturalist” text in the story “to build a fire” advices methods on the survivals of nature 's forces, this is a highly appropriate advice considering our struggle against disastrous natural phenomena such as global warming, tsunamis, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other geologic processes.
...e of them fell through and got wet. Since both of these situations had consequences, the reader can foreshadow that this expedition is not going to end well for the man. The man not being on the dog’s side and listening to it got him in the last situation. He built his last fire underneath a tree and the snow melted and fell onto the fire and put it out. His ignorance and overconfidence in his survival skills and not trusting the instincts of the dog eventually led him to his death.
The Fire “C’mon, it’ll only take you a second,” he said. I can still remember the look on his face; he looked like a puppy begging for a treat. My red-haired neighbor was three years older than me; he had a sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks and a certain charm in his voice. “Ben, I don’t know about this. I don’t want to get into trouble,” I, being ever cautious, was always reluctant to participate in Ben’s adventures.
Karen Rhodes analyzed to build a fire in a cultural context. He believed "London's works were written so that he could survive in a world he increasingly came to see as "red in tooth and claw""(1). It is obviously the story of a man fighting the stresses of Nature. According to Rhodes, to build a fire was drawn from the year London spent in Canada's Yukon Territory. London depicted arctic and very cold conditions throughout the story. Rhodes believed to build a fire represented London's Naturalistic Flavor. "It pits one man alone against the overwhelming forces of nature"(Karen Rhodes, 1). He also believed to build a fire can either be interpreted as the Pioneer American experience or can be read as an allegory for the journey of human existence (Karen Rhodes, 1). According to Rhodes, there are two versions of to build a fire; the first one was written in 1902 while the second one was written in 1908. We are studying the 1908 version." It has come to be known as everyman trekking through the Naturalistic Universe"(Karen Rhodes, 1). To build a fire is indeed the story of a man trekking through the universe alone except for his dog. The man's death at the end was the culmination of the story. " His death came through no lapse of observation, no lack of diligence, no real folly but the nature of himself and his environment" (Karen Rhodes, 2). I think his is a fine criticism of London's to build a fire. London had made use of his life experiences in writing the story.