Jack London Conflicts

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In the short story “To Build a Fire” the main character faces many challenges throughout the plot. Even when he tries to persevere and push through he fails miserably. As the story progresses more and more conflicts are born. The setting of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is merciless and has a major impact on the main character.

In “To Build a Fire” the main character believes he is ready to take on the extreme wilderness. He begins his hike on the Yukon Trail, but decides to take a detour and turn off to scout land. Eventually he plans to meet his friends at the old claim near Henderson Fork. The only issue is, he’s attempting to make the journey in fifty degrees below zero weather. His only partner; a dog. Even though this is his first hike off trail, he feels he is unstoppable, as if the bone chilling cold can’t touch him. He has been warned countless times to never travel alone, but he doesn’t listen. When the man starts on his route …show more content…

The man has to trudge through thick bitter snow, and cross over a stream that has patches of thin ice natural from hot springs. While crossing the creek he hits one of the pockets of the fraile ice and breaks through into the arctic water. Chaos also occurred, because of the setting when he tried to defrost himself. “Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree---an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow....It grew like an avalanche, and it descended upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out”(89). In this sample from the story, the man had made a fire under a spruce tree. Just when he thought everything was going well a load of snow from the branches of the tree broke free and smothered his fire, leaving him powerless to restart

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