Jack London's To Build A Fire

Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a short story that was written during the historic Klondike Gold Rush period and takes place in Yukon, Canada. Although many individuals agree that “To Build a Fire” is a classic piece of literature, quite a few have much to share about London’s style regarding the path that the protagonist takes from the beginning of the story. The Yukon setting is what London uses as a way to show that the prominent cause of death of the protagonist is mother nature’s freezing temperatures. Critics have drawn attention to “the man’s” lack of imagination and the abundance amount of self reliance during such crucial circumstances. Anthony Hilfer, David Haddon, and Lee Mitchell, all agree that the man’s actual cause of death

Hilfer indicates that the protagonist’s main flaw is his lack of imagination to foresee the risks of his situation. The critic uses the man’s first realization of freezing temperatures as a way to prove that the main character did not imagine the consequences that come with being exposed to fifty degrees below zero. “[The extreme temperatures] 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; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe (Hilfer). Hilfer says that the failure to envision the consequences of a human body being exposed to such low temperatures shows that the man did not know better at the beginning of the literacy piece. This ignorance that later backfires is supported by Hilfer’s words that the man “lacks respect for the power and danger of the world's sublime force” (Hilfer) rather than nature being the one at fault like the short story portrays. The lack of respect that the critic mentions corresponds directly with the man not being to imagine his proper place in nature. Hilfer also talks about the “ironic verbal texture that reiterates "he knew," "he knew," "he knew" three times in one

Mitchell talks about how “we [readers] tend to hold the man culpable for having made an error of judgment” (Mitchell). The man’s error of judgment is presented when he decides to ignore advice from an experienced individual regarding the hardly traveled path he takes in Yukon. Mitchell describes the man’s character as being negligent and containing issues with responsibility at the start of the story; agreeing with Anthony Hilfer’s idea that by underestimating others, the man demonstrates his arrogance. Mitchell supports his idea by writing about how being negligent to his own well being, and lacking responsibility for his own actions once again issues the man’s failure to succeed. The critic also uses the narrator’s attempts to building a fire as a way to prove the arrogance and error of judgment that the man’s character holds. Just like Hilfer mentions the irony in the man repeating that “he knew” better about being out in the wilderness, Mitchell comments on how “the man’s alleged knowledge, increasingly invoked, [becomes] to seem first inadequate, then simply irrelevant” (Mitchell). His error of judgment is shown as the man continues to start a fire in order to survive but alas continues to fail at the critical task. The arrogance that the man withholds is exposed