Struggle With Himself In Jack London's To Build A Fire

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A Mans Struggle With Himself Jack London’s “To Build A Fire” could be described as the ultimate man versus nature story. The main character battling nature’s every attempt to kill him and striving forward to find his friends and the warmth they would bring. However; after reading through the story multiple times I believe that the underling element of this story is not man versus nature but merely man versus himself. Throughout the story we can see the events that led up to the man’s undoing were his lack of knowledge, his stubborn ways, and his foolish behavior. We learn about the lack of knowledge obtained by our character within the second paragraph when it states not only was he new to the land but it was also his very first winter. Because of this the character finds himself in some complicated situations. He severely underestimated the effects the cold weather would have on him and even stated that 50 degrees below zero meant nothing more to him than a little cold weather. Ultimately this lack of knowledge kick started his decent to failure. …show more content…

The first example we see of this is for pages into the story when the man continues to walk along a iced over river despite multiple close calls of falling through the ice. Even after the mans dog falls into the water he continues to push forward down the same trail instead of finding a better rout to take. Another instance that we see his stubbornness is mid way through the story when he momentarily regrets not wearing a nose guard like his friend Bud had. These kinds of guard went across the nose and cover most of the face. He simply thinks what’s a little frost? Painful, but nothing to be concerned about. If our character was less stubborn and more concerned about the danger he was subjectifying himself too I am sure this story would have a much different

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