Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” is about the struggles of a man in the harsh winter conditions of the Yukon. The man was purposely not given a name to demonstrate the severe environment that is more important than his individuality. In the tale he had been in a constant search for “the boys” who could potentially provide shelter, food, and warmth. However, the man totally disregards the advice from the wise old-timer, which puts him in real danger. Throughout his journey a dog that instinctively understands the severity of the extreme temperature accompanies him. London puts his main focus on the man in the story. He was described as “chechaquo,” (London 850) which means newcomer in Chinook, and it was his first winter. However, he was inevitably tough, “quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in …show more content…
“The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below.” (London 855) However, the man scoffs at the advice and did otherwise which cost him his life. He had caught himself in various life or death situations that only the accompaniment of a partner could that have been avoided. When the man had started his first fire, he was quick to light it but did not consider the block of snow above him. London writes, “If he had only had a trail mate he would have in no danger now. The trail mate could have built the fire.” (London 856) The man did not take into account the potential dangers of the temperature, if he had followed the old-timer’s advice he would have an aid to his frostbite. “The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice.” (London 855) This crucial role of the old-timer gave the man a sense of danger he had put himself through in order to get to the
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
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
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 man is cautioned by knowledgeable men about taking note of traveling alone in severely cold temperatures, the man blatantly ignores them. He thinks to himself, “Any man who was a man could travel alone” (553). This shows not only his ignorance to the harsh realities of an extreme climate but him as a highly critical character because he assumes the old-timer is not a “real man” since he suggested not to travel alone. Not only that, but the man carries his ignorance over the course of his journey. After swiftly creating a fire in a desperate situation, he thinks boldly “...the cold of space was outwitted” (551). He believes he has successfully overcome nature’s harshness by building one fire on his lengthy journey to the next camp. His bold thinking reveals the man’s arrogant character, which prevents him from being prosperous in the harsh climate. It lulls the man into a false sense of security where he believes he is unstoppable. However, like any man, he is not as strong as he believes himself to be. As the environment does its work, the bitter cold becomes even more dangerous, and the man is faced with a choice- he can keep fighting or give in to the sleepiness of death. At this point “...he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity...Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it
In “To Build A Fire”, the main conflict throughout is man versus nature although it would be inaccurate to say that nature goes out of its way to assault the man. The fact of the matter is, nature would be just as cold without the man's presence regardless of him being there .The environment as a whole is completely indifferent to the man, as it frequently is in naturalist literature. The bitter environment does not aid him in any way, and it will not notice if he perishes. In the same way, the dog does not care about the man, only about itself. Ironically enough though, as the man was dying he was getting upset toward the dog because of its natural warmth, the instincts that it had, and its survival skills and those were the elements that the man lacked for survival. It is ironic that the man had to die in order to find out that man's fragile body cannot survive in nature's harsh elements, regardless of a human’s natural over-confidence and psychological strength.
...ezing, cold weather. The two types of conflict in “The Open Boat” and “To Build a Fire” are: man vs. self and man v. nature which are common in naturalism literature. London uses naturalism to show how harsh and indifferent nature really is and how no matter what, nature will always be there. He furthermore presented the basic idea of Darwinism and the survival of the fittest, ultimately if you are not the strongest you will not survive. London showed us that we only can depend on ourselves to survive in this world or in the Yukon of Alaska. "To Build a Fire" illustrates that the closer to death the character comes, the plot declines. As the story advances, the man's ambitions go from making it to camp, to staying warm, to just simply surviving. When reading, you can sense the lack of effort on the man's part, only brings him closer to a freezing, unavoidable death.
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...
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.
In response to the romantic period (1798-1870), authors began to focus their writing on ordinary people and their everyday lives rather than the supernatural, nationalism, heroism, and strange and faraway places, themes characteristic of romantic literature. In the story “To Build a Fire” shows what a realism story looks like. Everything about it is based on real events that can happen, is realistic. Whatever happens to the man, you can relate to because you know how cold it can get and maybe you also can relate how hard it is to build a fire. A lot of people, like the man in the story, sometimes arent as bright in the head and can be the cause of their own problem. In the story there is a part where the man fails to kill the dog because his hands are frozen, shows how a lot of times you cant accomplish something, you fail. Instead of a happy ending and expecting for the man to find his way back to camp, he does not, he dies, adds that very realistic event that would of happened to many other people and the story has a bad ending
On page 6 in the 1st paragraph it also stated “The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below.” This shows that the man was given advice by the old-timer to never travel alone in the Klondike when the temperature is below -50°C. The man was well aware of how low the temperature was. However, the man still disregarded the advice given by the old-timer and went on a journey alone.
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 creates a setting that is hostile and “cold”. The story is set in the wilderness of the frozen Yukon, during the harsh winter months, when “there was no sun nor hint of sun” in the sky. The character that London introduces is isolated from the world. “The man” doesn't have a companion; only the dog that follows him.
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...
Jack London wrote a fiction short story called “To Build a Fire.” In this short story Jack London wrote, he used imagery and characterization. Imagery is the use of words and phrase that appeal to the five senses. Characterization is the process by which the writer reveal the personality of a character. So, this is what Jack London uses in the whole story.
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.