To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire A Paper Jack London?s short story, ?To Build a Fire?, incorporates the struggle for a man and his dog to survive the forces of nature. The story also demonstrates how man is a creature of intellect and dog is a creature of instinct. Ignoring advice about traveling alone in the brutal Alaskan winter, the man begins his journey with his dog. Never realizing the ramifications of exposure to such brutal weather when temperatures are fifty degrees below freezing, he pushes forward, thinking he can beat nature and reach the camp before dark. As he continues his excursion, chances for survival diminish when many mistakes are made attempting to build a fire. Also, the ignorance and conceit of this man would not allow him to follow the dog?s instincts in the freezing weather. Therefore, he succumbs to mother nature and dies. Consequently, the forces of nature are greater and can outsmart a foolish man. In the story called ?The Necklace?, Guy de Maupassant wrote about an unhappy woman, Mathilde Loisel, who desired the riches of life. However, she was married to a man with minimal wealth. One day Loisel, her husband, surprised her with an invitation to an exclusive social gathering. Instead of responding with glee, she only could worry about how she would look for the event. She took the little bit of money they had and purchased a gown. Then Mathilde borrowed a beautiful necklace from a friend of hers. At the end of this special evening she realized that the necklace had been lost. Her and her husband took out many loans to pay for the replacement. All of their earnings went to pay these loans. After ten years of hardship the loans are paid and she meets the friend who lent her the necklace. Mathilde finally finds out that the original necklace was not even made of real gems.
A person's next move can affect them and someone in their life without them even realizing it. So why would they want to make the decision that could result in a sudden death in their family ? It is only right they be held accountable for the steps that lead up to or occurred after, they got entrapped in a life or death situation unless, it happens to be an accident.
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.
The short story "To build a Fire" by Jack London, tells about the relationship between man and nature. The story takes place in the Yukon during one of the long night. The main character who is unnamed travels with a dog along a small trail to a mining camp. The man leaves against the advice of a local and after a short time realizes that he should have waited. The temperature is extremely cold because the mans spit freezes before it hits the ground. The main obstacle of his journey is the many covered springs that mean death to whoever falls into them. The man sends his dog in front of him to make sure that the trail is safe. Eventually the dog falls into one of the springs and gets his paws wet. Immediate, acting solely of instinct, the dog begins to chew the ice off of his feet. Further down the trail a similar incident happens, but this time the man falls into the spring. In order to keep his feet from freezing he has to build a fire. The first attempt to build a fire is flawed by the location the man chose under a tree. After the man is unable to light a second fire because of the loss of dexterity in his fingers, he becomes panicked and blindly runs, until totally exhausted, and dies. Throughout the story the mood gives the impression of extreme cold, and the tone is ironic. Through the actions of the main character, Jack London shows that man must be humble to nature.
In the course of human history, man has managed to do some really dumb things. Whether it’s because we lack sufficient knowledge, make a mistake, or are just too stubborn to use sound judgement, dumb decisions are made every day by everyone. However, none have a greater level of stupidity than the choices made by the man in Jack London’s To Build a Fire. This is a story of pride, ignorance, and stupidity, which ultimately leads to the downfall of its main character. This short story is a caution against over confidence and unpreparedness, showing the harsh effects of both. Ultimately, it is an issue of man’s pride versus the harsh conditions of nature. It shows that one cannot simply overlook nature, because doing so can lead to the destruction
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."
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).
To Build a Fire is a remarkable account of one man’s finish line. In it this story holds quite a few rather important morals. There is as well a very important theme. The theme most referred to is that of the power of nature. The force that it can display on earth is immense and cannot be duplicated or overpowered by humans. However one man decided he would be the one prove this axiom wrong. One man became totally confident that he can and will withstand the awesome mighty strength of nature.
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 's "To Build a Fire" is a tragic story of a man who embarks on a journey through the frigid cold on the Yukon Trail during a brutal winter and is faced with battling the power of nature. We are shown a man who begins his journey, accompanied by a wolf-dog that follows, with all the confidence in the world, only to quickly end, not just his travels, but also his life. London uses many elements of naturalistic literature to tell his story. The theme of man versus nature, as well as survival, is our first evidence of this. He also concentrates on narrative as opposed to character to make his point that we are nothing in the eyes of nature. Determinism is another theme used that is extremely important. Naturalism, in all, is a type of extreme realism that is built on the idea that environment determines and governs human character. "To Build a Fire" is a classic example of naturalistic literature and shows that, if humans are not careful, nature will defeat them.
“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.
...s he keeps his head. As he pushes on he is slowly becoming weaker and slows down dramatically. Again he decides to build a fire, but this time it is no use. He has built the fire under a large tree that has been weighed down by snow, and when he pulls off some twigs to feed the flame or the fire, the built up snow on the tree is loosened and falls on the man and puts out the fire. He does not move, he can’t. “You were right, old hoss; you were right,” the man mumbles before he finally closes his eyes and lets the cold take him, He dies in the snow. “This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers,” (“To Build a Fire” Jack London).
In “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the setting plays a significant role throughout the entire story. The chosen setting by London creates a specific and idealistic mood for his depressing story. It forces, as well as prepares, it’s audience to what the story holds. The amount of constant detail the story holds allows the reader to anticipate the ending that is inevitable to happen.
Providing the separation between survival and death. setting was the most important factor in "Building a Fire" by Jack London. Works Cited and Consulted Hendricks, King. Jack London: Master Craftsman of the Short Story. Logan: Utah State U P. 1966.
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.