Jack London's To Build A Fire

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In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, a man begins his day’s trek into the cold Yukon wilderness, with the goal of meeting up with other men at their camp for dinner later that day. With only the clothes on his back, one meal, and his dog to keep him company, the man is confident that he will make it to camp on time. However, his confidence and desperation overtakes him, and despite his efforts, he freezes to death in the snow, signifying that hubris and ill-considered plans can kill even the toughest of men in nature. Eventually, the dog trots off to finish the journey without him. The main character of this story, who London gives no other name except ‘the man’, starts his journey with absolute confidence that he will reach …show more content…

While the dog and the old timer do play an important role throughout the story, it is the unceasing cold weather of the Yukon that creates the most conflict in the man’s journey. The cold is characteristically unrelenting, and as the man’s journey goes on, it begins to affect the man’s thoughts and actions more heavily. Initially, the cold is only something that the man scientifically acknowledges. When he spits his tobacco into the snow, he notices that “this spittle had crackled in the air… But the temperature did not matter”(London 851). 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). The man continuously tried to warm himself by beating his hands against his sides in the attempt to regain feeling, actively trying to fight off the uninterrupted cold that was creeping into his body, but nothing would work. The cold creates a conflict not only between itself and the man’s body, but it also continues to create conflict between itself and the man’s mind. The man must try to warm himself from physically freezing, but he also must remain calm or else his panic will drive him mad with fear. The man continues to wage this internal struggle within his head, and he ultimately comes to the realization that “he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought… sometimes it pushed itself forward and

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