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Jack london to build a fire example essay
Jack london to build a fire example essay
Jack london to build a fire example essay
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As a child, I couldn’t accept that my parents could be right about anything. When I entered the second grade, I started receiving nightly homework assignments. My parents told me to do all of my homework as if I was getting a grade on it, and to always aim to get everything correct. Like most eight-year-old kids, playing outside appealed to me more than doing worksheets about multiplication or writing book reports. Therefore, one warm summer night after school early in the year, I hopped off the bus and rushed through my homework, putting down random answers for any questions I didn’t know. Playing outside was fun, but the next day at school, reality hit me. My teacher announced that she was collecting the homework for a grade. With a rapid pulse and a bright red face …show more content…
London’s first attempt to create an alarming mood is when he describes the almost invisible trail and heavy snow the Yukon has experienced. London writes that “The trail was faint. A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light” (23). The reader is first alarmed by the unseen trail that London explains occurred due to a heavy snowfall, which further alludes the reader to the dangers of this man’s travel and the alarming mood of the story. Furthermore, cold weather once again contributes to the setting when London describes the man’s body in the cold. Once the man’s body starts to shake and tremble, London claims that he is “losing the battle with the frost” (33). The setting of the cold and the frost has now caught up with the seemingly invincible man, creating an alarming and dangerous mood as he runs out of body heat and energy. The bitterly cold setting has now lead to an alarming mood due to the death of the man. Through his detailed use of setting, London can effectively convey an alarming
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
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.
Naturalism can be seen in Jack London’s To Build a Fire because it puts a regular person in extraordinary circumstances, putting the main character at the mercy of natural forces, the bitter cold. Throughout the story, it is obvious that nature holds no regard for man and is a powerful force not to be messed with. Naturalism is shown in this story by showing how people need to be careful at every corner, as death could reach them anywhere, waiting for them to commit a mistake that could take their lives. The story is about a man and his dog trying to survive the harsh below zero weather by building a fire. London uses social Darwinism, by showing survival of the fittest. The unnamed main character is unable to survive on his own in the cold
In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” the nameless man’s pride cost him his life. Throughout the story, the character exhibits many indications that there is a possibility of his demise. It begins with the character’s inability to ground himself to reality, he observed the events happening around him, but he does not fully grasp the impact they have on him. He is naïve and overconfident, believing he could survive on his own; he does not take advice from an experience man from that country.
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.
Today’s century is different from all other centuries in many ways, but the main being nature. Today people don’t worry about natures effects on us. We have science, technology, and shelter. Three things that save us from whatever nature decides to bring. Therefore nature is just something beautiful to look at through a camera and we don’t even consider nature being something that can decide our fate. But what if we didn’t have our technology, science, and shelter? Would nature be so kind? In Jack London’s stories “Law of Life” and “To Build a Fire”, London argues that nature as a force that doesn’t care about the laws that humanity has built. He writes nature so that it uses Charles Darwin’s natural selection and Herbert Spencer’s “survival
The great and disastrous impact of nature against man proves to play a central role as an external conflict in London's short story. The extreme cold and immense amount of snow has a powerful and dangerous hold against the man. The numbing cold proved so chilling that the man could not even spit without the spit freezing. “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air."(604). That deadly force of nature goes on to further challenge the man, preventing him from continuing his goal. "At a place where there were no signs, where the soft unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through."(608). At this point in the story, nature overtakes the man, a conflict that directly stops him from achieving his goal, establishing nature as an external conflict providing the man with a struggle.
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” 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.
No matter how hard people try, nature always wins, however there are those rare exceptions. Unfortunately, this is not one of those stories. In Jack London’s To Build A Fire, a young adventurer learns the hard way that nature is unpredictable, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. the theme of this story is that nature is no force to reckon with
London’s use of variety syntax creates suspense and shows how the man’s confidence affects his success in surviving the treacherous journey. His anger and misfortune resulting from a mistake are portrayed through various sentence structures. The paragraph begins with very long sentences, but as it continues, it becomes more staccato and intense. The paragraph ends with the line, “He knew that much.” This line retraces back to the theme after a fire building crisis.
“It was a clear day. However, there seemed to be an indescribable darkness over the face of things” (64). Jack London gives subtle hints in “To Build a Fire” as to why the human race should never take the power of nature for granted. The ignorant traveling man, the instinctive wolf dog, and the unforgiving Yukon trail all warn us of this idea. London writes about the man traveling as if he is ignorant, prideful and overly confident in his ability to navigate the Yukon trail.
The cold is already a driving force behind why the man must get to his camp on time, but he refuses to dwell on it too much. As time goes on, the cold gradually begins to have more of an unforgettable presence for the man. His thoughts about the cold begin to come more and more frequently, and what once was something he hardly acknowledged becomes threatening. In his second attempt to build a fire that he needed to dry his wet feet, he struggled with his numb hands and in his mind “was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept calm”(London 857).
Then we find out he has a companion with him, a husky who doesn’t seem to enjoy the weather but stays loyal to the man in hope to get warm and get rest soon. The narrator also gives us a hint on the temperature by explaining how the unnamed man would spit and then his saliva would turn into an icicle then shares how there is still nine hours ahead for his journey. As far as the setting goes, it is given to us on the very first page that the unnamed man is traveling in Yukon, Canada and this is all taking place during the great Klondike Gold Rush which took place between 1896 and 1899. Taking this into consideration, we have to realize that this man is in the freezing cold with no form of communication, limited supplies, and a dog to take care of.
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.