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To build a fire essay
To build a fire essay theme
To build a fire thematic essay
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Jack London, a young man from a low working class family, was not a person that would let his family lack of income get to him and what he wanted to do with his life("Jack"). London from a young age was very intelligent and had graduated from high school a year early. He attended the University of California at Berkeley but did not finish four years and left college after his first year to travel to the Yukon. When he had arrived in the Yukon wilderness he became a prospector during the Klondike Gold Rush. His experiences during the time in the yukon led to many of ideas for his exciting adventure stories that he will write later on.("Jack") London's most popular writing, "To Build a Fire", showed various experiences he had in the Yukon wilderness. The story had a lot of themes that were important to the outcome of it but the most important theme is realism. The basic definition of realism is the faithful representation of reality. Realism is important to the outcome of the character and his actions and his decisions that the reader is able to see. …show more content…
The character sets out on his journey to find gold in the Yukon and comes to realize that he is faced with the intense cold weather along with the harsh snow storms that are very common in the Yukon(Prentice 608). The unidentified character knew of the harsh cold and thought he had prepared enough to tackle his journey; however, had came to the realization that sometimes thinking that someone can push through a difficult task is more challenging than just acting on it. The man had taken steps to plan out his trip by taking note on the suns location and where and when he would need to set up camp if need be(Prentice 609). He brought his trustful husky dog along with him which helped to share body heat and most defiantly kept them alive during the harsh winter
He is very unprepared because he doesn’t have enough equipment to finish his trip because it’s too cold. The traveler does not have proper clothing to keep him warm in the cold weather. ”The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened
In his report, “Keeping His Head”: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s “To Build a Fire,” Lee Clark Mitchell shares that most naturalist aficionado quiver at the style. This is in part because the enthusiasts thought London’s plot was “childish” and speed was sluggish (76). Mitchell suggests that these readers are ignoring the style and viewing it as irrelevant but he believes the style should be paid attention to because London does not write in the standard naturalist way. He finds London's style rather “compelling” and “curious” and believes other will too if repetition and tenses are accounted for (80, 78).
Before going on his trek alone into the Yukon wilderness, an “old-timer” had given the protagonist in “To Build a Fire” advice. He told the protagonist not to travel alone in the frigid Yukon territory because it can get dangerously cold.. The protagonist chooses not to follow this advice and comes to regret it as he freezes to death. Towards the beginning, the protagonist even looks down upon the old-timer, believing the old-timer to not be as manly as him. The protagonist initially thinks, “Those old-timers were rather womanist, he thought […] Any man who was a man could travel alone” (21). Not only does the protagonist ignore the advice of the old-timer, but he even thinks of the old-timer as being inferior and weak. The protagonist completely overlooks the fact that the old-timer is a veteran to the unforgiving land and he is merely a newcomer with little knowledge of the land. The protagonist soon realizes that the old-timer was right. The narrator acknowledges the wisdom in the advice of the old-timer once the cold has set in on the protagonist: “That man [the old-timer] from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth […] and he [the protagonist] had laughed at him at the time!” (15) The protagonist had once laughed at the old-timer, thinking the old-timer was just weak, but he now sees the wisdom in the old-timer’s advice. The protagonist comes to realize that the old-timer was right but by this point it is far too late. Christopher McCandless also ignored the advice of others throughout his adventure, the most distinguished advice given to him from an “old-timer” of Alaska directly preceding McCandless’s final journey into the Alaskan wilderness. Jim Gallien picked up McCandless outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and immediately noticed McCandless’s unpreparedness. After McCandless told Gallien of his plans to survive in
He became the twelfth child of his father, for through his first marriage he had eleven children. Jack London’s family was stricken by poverty. His father had many trades, however worked mainly in truck gardening(McCracken 370). After Jack’s graduation from grammar school, which he attended in Oakland, Jack read many novels, mainly ones about romance, travel, and adventure.
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).
Jack London is the name you can hear everywhere, his writing appealed to millions of people all around the world. London was an American novelist and short-story writer, who wrote passionately about questions of life and death, surviving. The writer had a lot of adventures, experienced the life at sea, or in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California, all of these influenced his writing style. Jack London descended from the family of his mother Flora and astrologer and journalist William Chaney. The writer has got his education by himself and with help of a librarian Ina Coolbrith - he has a passion to read books at public libraries. Later in life, Jack finally graduated from high school in Oakland. Jack London's work carrier was so variable, he has been a laborer, factory worker, and oyster pirate on the San Francisco Bay, member of the California Fish Patrol, sailor, railroad hob, and gold prospector. Yes, gold prospecting was the big part of his life, when the young writer with his brother-in-law sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he would set his first successful stories. Jack London was a hard-worker, he tried never miss his early morning 1,000-word writing stint, what helped him to write over fifty books between 1900 and 1916. In addition to it, he corresponded with his readers, and made huge researches for improving his writing style, what is, obviously, genius. The consequences of such a hard work became the fact that Jack London had become the best selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time. Many authors and social advocates have been inspired by Jack London’s heartfelt prose, and readers travel and experience so much through his books.
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.
Literature focuses on many aspects to form a coherent and captivating story, mainly those aspects retaining to characters and conflict. Within any story, a conflict arises for a character to overcome which drives the whole story. Conflict, the struggle against many forces of multiple varieties, creates the obstacle or issue a character must face to advance past the problem. In "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, conflict plays a major role in the story. The conflicts of man fighting against nature and man against himself present the struggles the unidentified man from "To Build a Fire" faces and attempts to overcome. These conflicts of man and nature influence the whole story and the fate of the character.
Jack London brings man versus nature discussion into his story. The environment, however doesn't play against him for say, but does warn him from the very beginning. The audience can conclude that just like “the man” everyone is alone in the world - fighting for ourselves and the things we wish to acquire. The character created by London is isolated from the universe and fooli...
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.
London’s actual name was John Griffith Chaney and he was born on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco, California. His mother, Flora Wellman, was unwed while his father, William Chaney, was a man of many trades, and he worked as an attorney, journalist, and also worked in the field of American astrology. London’s father was never permanent in his life and as a result, his mother married a man named John London, and the three moved to the Bay Area before they established themselves in Oakland. Jack was raised in a blue-collar, working-class family, but struggled throughout his teenage years because of the lasting impact of his father’s absence. As a result of his troubled childhood, London had a variety of jobs, comparable to his father, and he could never keep one for very long. From pirating oysters, working on a sealing ship in the Pacific to finding employment in a cannery, London’s undertakings did inspire him. Whenever London found any spare time, he would practice writing. His career in the writing world sparked in 1893, when his mother encouraged him to submit a story that was based off his adventures of surviving a typhoon on a sealing voyage, despite having only an eighth grade level education. A twe...
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.
...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.
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.