Nature Trumps the Imperfections of Humanity In Jack London’s story, “To Build a Fire,” the main character is a man who ventures alone into the unforgiving Yukon territory where the temperature is 75 degrees below zero. Although a big native wolf dog travelled with him, the man was essentially alone as the dog didn’t contribute much to the man’s success since dogs are unable to build fires. An old man from Sulphur Creek explicitly told the man to not travel by himself, yet the man disregarded the advice because of his pride. After an impulsive decision to walk on the purportedly frozen water of Henderson Creek, the man broke through, drenching his legs from his knees down. Knowing the danger of getting his feet wet in this temperature, the …show more content…
After trying all possibilities to avoid freezing to death, the man realized he lost his pride. “When he had recovered his breath and his control, he sat and thought about meeting death with dignity. However, the idea did not come to him in exactly this manner. His idea was that he had been acting like a fool. He had been running around like a chicken with its head cut off” (78). Then, he calmly accepted death, contrasting the reckless way he dealt with death before. “He was certain to freeze in his present circumstances, and he should accept it calmly. With this newfound peace of mind came the first sleepiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep his way to death” (78). In the beginning of the story, the man was prideful of his ability to survive in the severe conditions present. But, when he realized that he was in extreme danger of facing death, he began running like a chicken without a head, showing that nature had removed all his pride from him. Earlier in the story, the man would’ve considered it womanish to die in his sleep. He would’ve possibly thought a real man would die gloriously in battle, fighting for his own country. In contrast, by the end of the story, he accepts that he will perish in his sleep from his body freezing. Ultimately, this signifies that he accepts losing his masculinity to
...s and explications focus on the setting of the narrative and its graphic description, but few point out the undeniable change that takes place within the man as he attempts to ward off death. London incredibly sets up this realization as he builds the man to be overconfident, yet green to the Yukon. Tragedy is unavoidable for the man, it is how he reacts and deals with struggles of his journey that define his character and ultimately allow him to prevail with dignity. Though this change is short-lived in the story, the man dies almost instantaneously as the revelation is made, I am certain that the man would have a greater appreciation and sense of significance for his delicate life had he miraculously survived.
The man finally comes to the realization that he is going to die; he lies down in the snow and falls into a comfortable sleep. The dog stays with the man for a while confused and wondering why he is laying in the snow, he curiously walks up to the man and sniffs; the smell of death fills his nostrils. The dog leaves the man and searches for the other food and fire providers. In London’s “To Build a Fire”, he displays the perseverance that the man undergoes in various stages as he faces his imminent death. When the man starts this journey, he is unaware of the fate that Mother Nature has in store for him.
It was nine o’clock when he reached the top. The man along with his dog stay on the hiking trail hoping to make it to the camp where his buddies are. The man encounters a series of unfortunate events which lead to his demise. Although the man reached his demise he displayed poor decision-making skills, he was un-willing to listen, but he had the will to survive.
In 1908 Jack London published a tragic tale titled “To Build a Fire” in which the main character succumbs to the elements and passes away. Throughout the story Jack London shows the awe-inspiring power of nature with no regard to human life and the feebleness of man by pairing a dog and unnamed man together on a quest across the Yukon Trail. Throughout the story the man is ill-prepared, ill-informed, and unable to use the clues around him to survive. The dog is reluctant to follow the man throughout the story, but leaves his side only when it begins to smell the stench of death. Jack London opens the story by painting the picture of the Yukon Trail.
Jack London’s To Build a Fire follows an unnamed protagonist, who’s only referred to as “the man”, as he travels the Yukon Trail during a severe snow storm. Along with his husky wolf-dog, he determined to meet friends at an old junction by six o’clock. The man, who was warned not travel in the Klondike alone, presses forward through the terrain’s harsh weather. He later falls through the snow in what looked to be a secure spot. With his feet and fingers soaked, he starts a fire and begins drying himself. The man constructs the fire under a spruce tree in order to take its twigs and drop them directly onto the fire. Each time he pulled a twig a branch overturned its load of snow, eventually blotting out the fire. He grabs all his matches and lights them simultaneously to set fire to a piece of bark; it soon goes out. The man decides to kill the dog and use its warm body to restore his circulation, but is unable to kill the animal and lets the dog go. The man attempts to run from the thought of freezing to death but he quickly falls down. He decides he should meet death in a more dignified manner; the man falls off into a calm sleep.
In the classic naturalism tale “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, a man travels alone on the perilous Yukon Trail of Alaska. The man is so headstrong, that he ignores the advice and help of others. He decides to venture out into the subzero temperatures with only his dog beside him. A man he met in Sulfur Creek who is wiser and knows the threat nature presents, warns him that no man should travel alone in temperatures below 50 degrees. Still, the man ignores this advice because he thinks that he can survive.
When the narrator introduced the main character of the story, the man, he made it clear that the man was in a perilous situation involving the elements. The man was faced with weather that was 75 degrees below zero and he was not physically or mentally prepared for survival. London wrote that the cold "did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold."(p.1745) At first when the man started his journey to the camp, he felt certain that he could make it back to camp before dinner. As the trip progressed, the man made mistake after mistake that sealed his fate. The man's first mistake was to step into a pool of water and soak his legs to the knees. This blunder forced the man to build a fire to dry his wet socks and shoes so his feet would not freeze and become frostbitten. When the man began to build a fire he failed to notice that he was doing so under a large, snow laden spruce tree where he was getting his firewood. When the man had a small fire that was beginning to smolder the disturbance to the tree caused the snow to tumble to the ground and extinguish the fire. "It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open."(1750).
“To Build A Fire” is a clear example of naturalism and follows many of its conventions. Some of the characteristics of naturalism are being conditioned or controlled by the environment, having the world understood only through objective science, conflicts which bring out the instincts of man, pessimism, and presenting a viewpoint which is detached from the reader.
Foremost, the theme of this story is that ignorance can lead to poor decisions because the man ignores his surroundings. An example of this is when the man ignored the advice and warnings given by the old-timer from Sulphur Creek. It stated on page 4 in the 3rd paragraph “It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes gets in the country. And he laughed at him at the time.
Altho somewhat similar the two stories are very different in many ways. The first story is called “Mystery of Heroism” by Stephen Crane and the other one is “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. Both of the books are part of the short story genre and realism stories. The author's purpose for writing the “Mystery of Heroism” is to tell a story about a brave man who went to get water for a dying man. The purpose for writing “To Build a Fire” is to tell about a man and his dog and how he tried to fight the below freezing temperatures to stay alive. Both authors use realism because they want to tell real stories about people and how they had to overcome struggles in their lifetime. These two stories have similarities but they are way more different than anything else. One of the stories is about a man who has to overcome fear to get water for a man.
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".
In the story, “To Build A Fire,” by Jack London, a man goes hiking on the Yukon trail in Alaska and a series of events sends him spiraling down on a path towards death. He was walking alongside some springs when he broke through the ice and into the water. More specifically, “...he wetted himself halfway to the knees.” He tried to make a fire but the snow ended up blowing the fire out and he tried to make the fire again in a different spot but his hands were too numb to get it started.. Eventually, he decided to try to make a run for it back to camp so his friends could help him
In conclusion, the man thought he could travel the Yukon on his own even after the old man told him that it was not a good idea. He went through many obstacles, and the dog kept giving him warnings but the man’s ignorance and overconfidence got the best of him. London’s use of imagery, irony, and the relationship between the man and the dog helped the reader foreshadow the man’s death.
A: The film begins with a fire. It narrates the story of men running from a fire when, suddenly, one of the men stop and sets fire to the ground in front of him and the steps into the new safety zone he had just created. The term for his discovery became known as an escape fire. The directors used the idea of an escape fire as a metaphor for our health care system. Currently, our health care system is like a raging fire. The consuming flames of rising costs and a “disease maintenance” mind-set are about to consume our country and we must find a way out, an escape fire, before we perish. Like the men running away from the eminent death by the flames, we as a nation are sprinting towards
Obliterating everything in its path, a bushfire is a natural hazard, which can be defined as wild fires in scrublands and or bushlands, especially one that spreads rapidly and is hard to contain. They can be catastrophic, causing severe damage to properties, the environment and even deaths. And as a result there is an ever-increasing need to prepare for the potential impacts of bushfires.