Jack London's To Build A Fire

The short story "To build a Fire" by Jack London, tells about the relationship between man and nature. The story takes place in the Yukon during one of the long night. The main character who is unnamed travels with a dog along a small trail to a mining camp. The man leaves against the advice of a local and after a short time realizes that he should have waited. The temperature is extremely cold because the mans spit freezes before it hits the ground. The main obstacle of his journey is the many covered springs that mean death to whoever falls into them. The man sends his dog in front of him to make sure that the trail is safe. Eventually the dog falls into one of the springs and gets his paws wet.

In her passage, Ms. Vollmer argues about McCandless failing to hear the warnings provided by Jack London through his stories which McCandless had read and reread many times. In his story 'To Build a Fire' Jack London has shown the difference between a person who did not care about the risks and a dog with pure instincts. The similarity between this man and McCandless was that both were inexperienced to the adverse events of nature and both failed to see the dangers. The main purpose of London's story was to warn the adventurers about the risks to the wilderness. As an enthusiast of Jack London, McCandless had read these stories many stories many times and yet failed to understand London's warnings. Shreds of evidence lie in every mistake he had made as he continued his journeys making Vollmer's argument agreeable.

Whitman wrote broad stanzas and focused on the whole of America as his inspiration. His lines covered a wide range of topics and generated multiple points of view for the reader. He called his life’s work “Leaves of Grass”; stressing the

Nature is always pushing man to his limits. When man heeds the warning signs that nature has to offer and those warnings of other men, he is most likely to conquer nature. When he ignores these warnings, nature is sure to defeat man. To build a fire is a prime example of this scenario. In the short story, “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, an inexperienced traveler in the Yukon travels alone with his dog, even though it is ill advised to do so. The man is strong and smart but nature humbled him during his quest to reach his friends. The man’s inexperience with traveling in the cold subzero temperatures doomed him from the beginning, but his strong focus under extreme pressure and his keen sense of

In “To Build a Fire”, the author Jack London uses three fires to express the overall theme of pride. The unnamed man goes on a journey in freezing temperatures which leads him to make stupid decisions. The first fire the protagonist creates restores his pride he has in himself. London states, “for the fire was beginning to burn with strength”.

Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is the story of a nameless hiker traveling with his dog who has gone into the Alaskan winter with only enough to make fire, and one meal. He is making his journey by foot to meet up with his friends at a camp that lies a day ahead. He has prior experience with cold temperatures but his overconfident manner doesn’t allow him to make reasonable decisions throughout his journey. As the weather gets colder his confidence in survival quickly decreases causing him to regret his decision to ignore lifesaving advice from an experienced man. London portrays a theme of death in this short story and more is learned about the process of the characters thoughts; this shows the struggles the man faces as he comes to a harsh realization in the cold of the Alaskan wilderness.

Advice should never be taken lightly. The story “To Build a Fire”, the central character, also known as “The man”, is the central character of this story. The man is a compelling whose lack of instinct, thoughtlessness and determination leads him to his own death. To build a fire is a well written story arrayed in imagery. Throughout the story “The man” stumbled upon a few obstacles.

Vicious cold at 75 below; much colder than your average winter. “Spittle crackled in the air before it reached the snow.” This is what the man experienced in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”. He is lost in a relatively unknown landscape, the Yukon territory in northernmost Canada and Alaska. Traveling alone with his dog. This story could have had a happy ending except some setbacks, that were almost totally avoidable. Seemingly, the man could still be with us today if it were not for his negligence of the old man’s advice, didn’t build his fire underneath a tree, and went with a trail mate on his journey.

Whitman begins by creating a contradictory image of himself. On one hand he relays an egotistical representation by alluding that he is the center of the universe, "a kosmos, of Manhattan the son," almost a deistic type of character. Whitman also describes himself as not being above any one person, woman or man, an obvious contradiction to his previous representation. His God-like persona is depicted in human terms, physical qualities that all humans possess. Whitman creates this contradiction to show his belief that he is everything, but is only this way because everything is a part of him. He represents himself as part of a whole&emdash;nature, mankind, and the universe are all a part of him. By being everything in nature and nature being a part of him, Whitman has the power to become the voice of nature as a whole. He speaks for nature and mankind when they do not possess the power to do so. Whitman is the voice of all.

There are a multitude of aspects that lend themselves to the setting of any story and if left underdeveloped the setting will feel like a mere passing stranger. In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, if the author hadn’t devoted so much of the text and placed as much emphasis on the aspects of setting such as place, weather, and atmosphere there would be no story to be told. From the first to the last sentence of the story London forces the reader to submerge themselves in the frigid Yukon and walk alongside the freezing protagonist and his canine companion. For instance, in the opening line of the story London sets the overall setting and tone for the reader by illustrating, “Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray” (London 127).

“To Build a Fire” by Jack London, is a story based on a human’s inability to overcome the forces of nature. The story’s theme surrounds perseverance, even in the presence of a foolish decision. The character’s determination to face freezing weather, no matter how hard things get, shows that no matter how hard things got for him, he wasn’t going to give up. As the story goes on, the story depicts the characters ultimate decision to give himself a meaningful death. When faced with the forces of nature, the character decides to face his death with dignity and lay down next to a warm fire until death overcomes him.

Walt Whitman’s poetry provides prime examples of Transcendentalism’s impact on nineteenth century literature based on its utilization of sensual, emotive text and progressive thematic elements. His writing reflects a deep respect and awe of the natural world, and touts the virtues of individualism. It can be read as a reaction to the Enlightenment. “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”, as much as any of Whitman’s repertoire, criticizes the absolute importance placed on fact and reason in the Enlightenment era while highlighting the unquantifiable beauty of nature. The phrases focused on the Astronomer’s lecture satirize “intellectuals” with redundant structured language particularly in contrast to the gentler diction in the phrases depicting

To move onwards, Walt Whitman, a poetic mastermind of the 19th century revealed to man a multitude of positive things in regards to individualism, man’s relationship with the society that always manages to cast a shadow upon man itself, and how the 19th century American identified himself to the broad and rather daunting world that was presented upon him. Whitman manages to present such an overwhelming amount of encouraging information in regards to the individual and society through a few, yet plentiful, marvelous strokes of pen on paper. One of Whitman’s most notable works, “Song of myself”, presents a rather eye opening fact in regards to the “insignificant” individual; to explain, Whitman presents the following information in his aforementioned work “A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulness, A novice beginning yet experiment of myriads of seasons, Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest” (Whitman 7). Whitman’s statement serves to stress the fact that the individual isn’t one measly persona, but the contrary, a persona with many positive and overall outgoing characteristics, such serving to highlight the mass

The dominant themes that are more pervasive in Whitman’s poetry are democracy, life/death cycles, individualism, and nature. These themes play major roles in some of his more notable poems such as “Songs of Myself” or “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” He used democracy as a theme to bring society together, and unite everyone based on their general beliefs. He depicted life and death cycles to merge society together on a spiritual level. Despite his eagerness to unite society he also embraced individualism, and is also a persistent theme in most of his poetry. Nature was an important concept that Whitman used to convince people who there were more important things to life than class structure. He used nature connect us all, and encourage people to

My choice is for Jack London’s short story “ To build a fire”. I have always had a huge interest in great extremes of nature such as unpredictable floods or hurricanes or earthquakes or severe temperature changes which strongly influence the course of ordinary human life and cause people to show completely even unknown to themselves hidden deep in daily living qualities. I consider nature is a living matter that can react to the negatives provided by humanity in the forms of violent wars or conflicts or сareless attitude to natural resources or landscapes. Abnormal weather conditions or extremes are nature’s lessons to show humanity the fragility of our existence and thereby compel to respect the world of nature that was created not only for