Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” is a story about a man who travels only alongside a husky through the frigid conditions of the Yukon, and becomes a victim to Mother Nature. The man was warned before hand by an old man that he should not travel alone through the frigid Yukon. He ignored the old man’s advice and tried to prove to him that he would be able to cross the Yukon on his own. As the man traveled he was able to recognize the dangerous conditions around him and notice what it was doing to his extremities. Still he made no effort to slow down which resulted in his death. The imagery, irony, and relationship between the man and dog in the story help foreshadow death.
Jack London’s use of imagery in this story is very important. It lays a foundation of the mood of the story. “Day had broken cold and gray…there was no hint of sun. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow”(583). This helps the reader understand the type of setting of the story. London’s use of imagery also does a good job for the reader to picture what the man had to persevere. London uses imagery in a way that the reader can feel the harsh conditions and can hear the man’s spit crackle in the air. With the imagery London displays in the story, it helps the reader envision the man’s battle with nature and it foreshadows his death.
The irony that Jack London uses represents both dramatic and situational. As the man walks through the Yukon he is cautiously on a lookout. “…he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet”(586). Through this quote the reader would think that the man knows wha...
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...e of them fell through and got wet. Since both of these situations had consequences, the reader can foreshadow that this expedition is not going to end well for the man. The man not being on the dog’s side and listening to it got him in the last situation. He built his last fire underneath a tree and the snow melted and fell onto the fire and put it out. His ignorance and overconfidence in his survival skills and not trusting the instincts of the dog eventually led him to his death.
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.
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
...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.
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.
It was very strange to see another human/carriage on the ice. It was a shock to the crew to see a single man on a sled dragged by dogs through the Northern Sea. Comparing to a well equipped ship, the sled looked like a deadly ride. As mentioned earlier, you could only see the endless ice surrounding them and they couldn?t believe that a single man would travel far from the Big Land. However, the man on the sled was a gigantic stature and most likely he was a strong and brave man.
In literature, the faintest of details gives insight to very complex themes, ideas and narrative
In response to the romantic period (1798-1870), authors began to focus their writing on ordinary people and their everyday lives rather than the supernatural, nationalism, heroism, and strange and faraway places, themes characteristic of romantic literature. In the story “To Build a Fire” shows what a realism story looks like. Everything about it is based on real events that can happen, is realistic. Whatever happens to the man, you can relate to because you know how cold it can get and maybe you also can relate how hard it is to build a fire. A lot of people, like the man in the story, sometimes arent as bright in the head and can be the cause of their own problem. In the story there is a part where the man fails to kill the dog because his hands are frozen, shows how a lot of times you cant accomplish something, you fail. Instead of a happy ending and expecting for the man to find his way back to camp, he does not, he dies, adds that very realistic event that would of happened to many other people and the story has a bad ending
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).
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.
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.
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.
As the plot unfolds, I feel the story's protagonist falls victim to several factors brought into play at once: his inexperience with the severity of the Klondike winters, his inability to envision the possible consequences of his decision to travel alone in such weather, a series of unfortunate events during his trip, and the misjudgment exercised in his attempts to survive those incidents. Though quick and alert, the man's lack of imagination renders him unable to visualize what might happen to a man traveling without a companion should adverse circumstances arise in such severe weather in an uninhabited landscape. When he indeed finds himself in dire straits as a result of getting wet in the brutal freezing weather, he once again fails to imagine how quickly the cold will threaten his life and consequently misjudges the severity of his situation. His poor judgment causes him to make one mistake after another until he finds himself incapable of extricating himself from his situation. It seems obvious that had he made himself more familiar with the culture of the land and paid attention to the warnings of the old-timer on Sulpher Creek, he might have chosen to delay his trip and live to travel another day. Had he understood the importance of fostering a relationship with the dog, a native Husky with inbred instincts regarding the native climate, the dog would have interacted differently with him, maybe warning him of the danger of the weather through its actions or perhaps providing help, either by sharing its body heat or by going for help. However, instead he held little regard for the dog and the dog reciprocated: "there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man.
The Importance of Setting in Jack London's To Build A Fire In "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, the setting plays a. significant role throughout the entire short story. Jack London uses techniques to establish the atmosphere of the story. By introducing his readers to the setting, prepares them for a tone that is. depressed and frightening. Isolated by an environment of frigid weather and doom, the author shows us how the main character of the story completely unaware of his surroundings.
Jack London starts early in the story to set a foreboding feeling: "Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little traveled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland." (London) It is this feeling of doom and gloom that accompanies us throughout the reading of the story, and also is typical of the wonderful language of the story. With this London is foreshadowing the ending of the story where the man dies, a victim of his own pride and stupidity. Also creating the dark and dreary theme is London's "ability to create a gripping narrative based on realistic detail and on a sense of atmospheric gloom reminiscent on the work of Edgar Allan Poe." (Hogge) The manner in which London tells his story is what makes the story great.
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.