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Importance of setting in literature
Importance of setting in literature
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Have you ever thought of being lost in the coldest of weather and have nothing but your own pet. The setting in "To build a fire" has an impact on several parts of the story. Jack London, the author of this book, has made an outstanding book of a man and his pet. These characters have to survive mother nature as she puts them up at the challenge that could lead them to their demise. The setting in the story is very suspenseful and it has a lot of turns for the worst. One of the ways that the setting has an impact involves the major characters. The man and his dog pepper was put to the ultimate test as man and animal come together to survive but as the story unravels, suspense and desperation comes into play. The characters is in a struggle to live. Mother nature is helping the reader know whats going to happen next to the characters. The man is trying his best and using his instincts to survive the very cold weather but later on dies from being too cold. His dog pepper goes on to the other settlement where he is safe and the end of the story. …show more content…
The next one is the plot.
The plot involved the weather changing the setting and made the characters have to change. For example, since the weather was so cold and it was so much snow. As the man tried to make a fire, but the weather caused the fire to get put out and do to that, the man was even closer to death.(7) Since the temperature dropped, it made the man scared and desperate. After many failed attempts at making a fire to keep him warm, he realizes that he was wrong.(9) He doubted the old timer of Sulphur Creek who told him never to go alone in such a bad weather and now he had to pay the price.(9) The story had to changed a lot because of how it pushed the man over his limits and the cost of that was his own life. This made a big impact on the story
line. The last but not least is the theme. The theme is the authors thoughts when writing this book. He wanted to make the story sound scarce and dreadful. The readers knew that the major characters couldn’t handle the harsh and deadly weather. For example, “He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic.”(9) As the weather got colder and deadlier, the characters were only closer to dying. As a reader, you should know that the man would never make it through the snow by himself. Thats basically impossible.
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
In Mosquitoland by David Arnold, not only do the settings have effects on the plot/characters, but major or minor events do too. Without some of the following events, the plot would have been altered and would clearly not be the same.
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.
Setting is one of the most important factors in the shaping of a story; it shapes the plot and characters while also establishing the atmosphere. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the setting is pivotal because it is the backbone for which the story is based upon. Set in post apocalyptic America, The Road is a story of a boy and his father’s journey as they travel south to the coast to stay warm from the impending winter. Due to the condition of their environment, a desolate wasteland, the two characters form a special bond that compels them to be very protective of each other. Because of the isolation, the boy learns everything he knows from his father. The man teaches him simpler things like how to read but
...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.
Jack London was an American man of many talents, which included being an author, journalist and a social activist, despite being minimally educated. Nonetheless, he was undoubtedly most recognized for his short stories and novels that fixated on the harsh, cold climates that Mother Nature crafted. London focused on a deeper level of the wild and the literary devices in his work are littered throughout every one of his novels and short stories, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, as well as “To Build a Fire.”
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.
In his report, “Keeping His Head”: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s “To Build a Fire,” Lee Clark Mitchell shares that most naturalist aficionado quiver at the style. This is in part because the enthusiasts thought London’s plot was “childish” and speed was sluggish (76). Mitchell suggests that these readers are ignoring the style and viewing it as irrelevant but he believes the style should be paid attention to because London does not write in the standard naturalist way. He finds London's style rather “compelling” and “curious” and believes other will too if repetition and tenses are accounted for (80, 78).
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.
An Analysis of Jack London's To Build a Fire. In her cultural criticism of Jack London's "To Build a Fire", Jill Widdicombe explores the question of whether the story's protagonist might have perished from the extreme cold of the Klondike winter even if with a traveling companion. She describes the brutality of the winter weather and, alluding to the man's confidence in his ability to survive the weather, describes it as "behavior most of us can understand" - especially if we are accustomed to warmer surroundings. She states: "the extreme cold of frosty landscapes--or "The White Silence", as London describes it--is so quiet and abstract that it does not immediately appear to be lethal".
To Build a Fire - Jack London The short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a comprehensive story that tackles the struggles of a newcomer trying to survive a day in the Yukon with very harsh and cold weather. The man travels with a big native husky and tries many times to build a fire but fails due to his inadequate personality. The man repeatedly lets his ignorance and arrogance dictate his decisions, which soon leads to his demise. The theme of the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is that being ignorant, arrogant and foolish can lead to bad decisions.
When Jack London wrote "To Build a Fire" he embraced the idea of naturalism because it mirrored the events of daily life. Naturalism showed how humans had to be wary at every corner because at anytime death could be there, waiting for them to make a mistake and forfeit their lives. He used naturalism, the most realistic literary movement, to show how violent and uncaring nature really is and how no matter what you do nature will always be there. London also presented the basic idea of Darwinism and the survival of the fittest, basically if you are dumb you will die. Collectively, London used naturalism to show how in life, humans can depend on nothing but themselves to survive. "To Build a Fire" is a short story that embodies the idea of naturalism and how, if one is not careful, nature will gain the upper hand and they will perish.
One of the first ways that the setting has an impact on the setting involves the characters. For example Jerry feels challenged by the tunnel at the bay, he really wants to prove to himself that he can go through the tunnel, and make it out the other side. He knows that he will have to learn how to control his breathing under water in order to get through the tunnel. “First, he thought he must learn to control his breathing under water” (4). What he means by learning how to
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.
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.