To Build a Fire: A Story About Survival
“There was no Promise of sun, although there was not a cloud in the sky.” Jack London’s short story starts out cold and bleak. The story is about a man traveling the Yukon with a wolf-dog. They are set to get to an old camp off Henderson Creek to meet up with the boys, who arrived there earlier, a little after dark. Unfortunately, due to the man’s ego or rather lack of common sense, he ends up freezing to death on the trail and never makes it to the camp. This story is full of foreshadowing, irony and is about Naturalism in the sense of man verses nature.
The setting of the story takes place in the harsh environment of the Yukon. It is Canada’s smallest territory and is located just East of Alaska. The Yukon is known for its rugged terrain, its brutally cold winters and hot summers.
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There is a lot of foreshadowing going on. The day starts out cold and grey, and there is no sign of the sun rising in the sky. Though it was a clear day there was an “indescribable darkness over the face of things” (London). That paragraph alone sent shivers up my spine and hooked me into the story. I was curious as to what was going to happen not only to the man, but the only companion he had on this trek; his wolf dog. This paragraph set the mood, atmosphere and imagery for the entire story. I felt as though the darkness was overwhelmingly eerie and. As I continued on I began to see that this was going to turn into a man verses nature novel. Survival of the fittest. The man was new to the Yukon so with his inexperience came a abundant amount of danger so to travel alone, with just a wolf-dog, was stupid on his part. He had this ego about him and could not, for the life of him, listen to his instincts, whereas the dog could sense the danger and listened to his instincts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he studied briefly about the Yukon and its dangers but he didn’t fully
Synopsis In West Warwick, Rhode Island, on February 20th, 2003, during the performance of the band Great White, a fire broke out that eventually claimed the lives of 100 people and injured an additional 200. The band’s tour manager arranged for, and ignited pyrotechnic props, large fireworks designed to display a shower of sparks. Sparks ignited foam soundproofing near stage. The fire spread quickly and quickly.
They say to “always be prepared for unexpected situations,” this represents the man in the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. The man is unprepared because he does not
The perseverance displayed by the man in Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire”, is a true testament of the human spirit. Even when all of his surroundings are obviously against him, he continues to push forward and try to survive. When all of his hope was gone, he continued to remain calm and somewhat clear headed. London’s experiences while living in the Klondike helped him capture the essence of the wilderness, and put it in grave detail to influence the outcome and fate of his characters lives.
One of the ways that the setting has an impact involves the major characters. The man and his dog pepper was put to the ultimate test as man and animal come together to survive but as the story unravels, suspense and desperation comes into play. The characters is in a struggle to live. Mother nature is helping the reader know whats going to happen next to the characters. The man is trying his best and using his instincts to survive the very cold weather but later on dies from being too cold. His dog pepper goes on to the other settlement where he is safe and the end of the story.
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.
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).
Throughout recorded history, fires have been known to cause great loss of life, property, and knowledge. The Great Fire of London was easily one of the worst fires mankind has ever seen causing large scale destruction and terror. Samuel Pepys described the fire as “A most malicious bloody flame, as one entire arch of fire of above a mile long… the churches, houses and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made.” (Britain Express 1).
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is a short read with one character in it, but yet there are many details to ponder upon and analyze. And like Cather, Frost places a lot of emphasis on the details of setting in his works. In Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Frost describes the journey of a man who in between “the woods and frozen lake,” and “the darkest evening of the year,” stops suddenly with his horse to see the magnificent nature that has perhaps drawn his attention (233). The idea that it is unusual for an individual to stop from his usual route in dark and snowy conditions is prevalent in this very poem, but the idea that there is human connection with the environment is even
The short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a comprehensive story that tackles the struggles of a newcomer trying to survive a day in the Yukon with very harsh and cold weather. The man travels with a big native husky and tries many times to build a fire but fails due to his inadequate personality. The man repeatedly lets his ignorance and arrogance dictate his decisions which soon leads to his demise. The theme of the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is that being ignorant, arrogant and foolish can lead to bad decisions.
...ezing, cold weather. The two types of conflict in “The Open Boat” and “To Build a Fire” are: man vs. self and man v. nature which are common in naturalism literature. London uses naturalism to show how harsh and indifferent nature really is and how no matter what, nature will always be there. He furthermore presented the basic idea of Darwinism and the survival of the fittest, ultimately if you are not the strongest you will not survive. London showed us that we only can depend on ourselves to survive in this world or in the Yukon of Alaska. "To Build a Fire" illustrates that the closer to death the character comes, the plot declines. As the story advances, the man's ambitions go from making it to camp, to staying warm, to just simply surviving. When reading, you can sense the lack of effort on the man's part, only brings him closer to a freezing, unavoidable death.
The stories setting takes place in Western Colorado. In Western Colorado in a home of a retired nurse named Annie is where the whole story takes place. Annie's home is a two story log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. The closest neighbors are miles away. It takes place in the middle of winter snow storms.
Robert Frost’s poem, stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, depicts a man and his horse wanting to enjoy the snow. Through imagery, diction, and personification Frost was able to describe the scenery of the adventure in a manner of his views of life.
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.
The story is a London places a strong emphasis on the setting in the introduction. to the story of the. The day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey." He repeats these phrases to redefine to his readers the impact the setting has on the lives of the characters. The gloominess of the setting instills feelings in the man and the dog, of a constant battle with this world of depression they are in.
Though they were not wanted, “Fires were not uncommon in seventeenth-century London” (Cowie, 59). Fires weren’t the only things that London residents worried about though. In 1665 a tragedy known as the Black Plague had occurred and killed many people in the city and though the plague was gone “People continued to fear another outbreak of plague for the rest of the seventeenth century” (Cowie, 56-57). The Great Fire of London was a tragedy that destroyed a whole city and scared all the people who inhabited it. Just as the city was recovering from the Great Plague, the inhabitants had to flee the city once again- this time not as a result of a disease, but the result of a human accident (“The Great Fire of London of 1666”, 1).