Theme Of Pride In To Build A Fire

How Proud Is Too Proud;

An analytic view on pride in “To Build a Fire” and “The Tragedy Coriolanus”

John Ruskin once said “In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes” (Brainy Quote 1). Pride is the down falls of many great men and in the case of “To Build a Fire” and “Coriolanus” that is exactly what happened. The pride of these two men leads them both to an untimely end although in two different situations, the intertextuality binds them. I think pride is the common thread between these two tragic heroes and lead to the downfall and ultimately there demise.

In both texts the men are depicted as men who are full of pride. In “To Build a Fire” by Jack London the narrator speaks about his journey through the Yukon. Before his journey he was prompted by a wiser old man to never go through this trail on his own; that this was far too dangerous when the temperature was this cold. His pride leads him to ignore the older man’s words and travel the Yukon alone. This choice ended up to be one of the worst he would make and in the long run this prideful mindset is his downfall. His pride left him in the middle of the Yukon wet, freezing, and is unable to save his own life with no one there to depend on. In one paragraph he states "You were right, old hoss; you were right," although in these moments he finally saw that he is not always right it was far too late, he was destined to die and therefore he did ( TO BUILD A FIRE TEXT). In the criticism of this piece by Don D’Ammassa he stated something very similar to the views that have been expressed earlier “The nameless character in the revision is doomed by his own pride and foolishness, having learned his lesson far too late to benefit from it” (D'Ammassa 1). This sta...

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... His mother was always a diving fore in his behaviors,and her being proud of him was always very important to him, so if his mother was proud of him he would see that inturn be porud of himself and his accplpishments wheather he was truly accempting of them or not. One could also agure that he is proud for the same reason as the man in “ To build a fire” that being proud because he knows that he is stronger or manly then other people may be.

Is there such a thing as being to prideful? I would say that when your pride is able to take over your life and cause you to untilmaly lead to you death then I would say you might be to prideful. Then men in these stories are different in so many ways, the context to there storys are not ones that would ushally be compared bing as one takes place in the yukcon and the other in rome., But somehow these men have a comaon element.