Influence Of The Setting In Jack London's To Build A Fire

The man represents the fraction of society that doesn't respect nature. He doesn't understand the power of nature because he is oblivious to it. On the other hand the dog was "told a truer tale than that was told to the man by the man's judgement." The man "did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold." "The was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man." The man and the dog are together because the man needs the dog, and the dog has no choice. They have no emotional connection between them because the dog is used as a slave. In one part of the story the man uses the dog to test the trail and make sure that it is safe. The dog has more inherent knowledge about the area, all of his "ancestry knew" about the cold and the dangers of extreme cold. He also had a warm "natural covering" to keep him safe from the weather. The man was not used to the cold. He "was without imagination. He was quick and alert to the things of life, but only the things, and not the significances." He also was stubborn for his neglect to take advice.

But, we realize almost immediately, the man has only a superficial knowledge of the Arctic. As he stands on a bank of the Yukon about to plunge into an almost absolute wilderness, he has little or no understanding either of his immense isolation relative to his surroundings or of the extreme danger posed by the cold snap. But all of this, London comments at the beginning of the third paragraph, "The mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all, made no impression on the man." Thus, the man also knows, in addition to the fact the sun will reappear, that it is fifty degrees below zero, but he does not know the meaning of this fact, it portends death for anyone who makes himself vulnerable to its ability to kill. "Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head."

It is a tragic tale of a man who chooses to brave the hostile winter environment of Yukon and travel in sub-zero temperatures. Even though he is advised by an old man (London, p.72) not to travel since it is too cold the man decides to brave the cold and get to his destination. That decision and hubris, in the end, becomes his undoing and causes him to die. There is a sense of irony in the story since even though the man was observant (London, p.68) he falls through the ice "At a place where there were no signs, the man broke through." (London, p.71). After that, the man tries to start a fire but does it under a snow filled tree that dumps snow on his fire and extinguishes it "The

If developed the right way, the setting can play an important role in a story like this. London builds his setting up quickly, within the first words of this story. The story is set in the wintertime with no sign of the sun, at the Yukon Trail. A deadly and extremely cold area in the country of Canada. In the story, the narrator states, “Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside

The setting plays a very important role in this novel. It causes for a very gloomy tone throughout the entire the story.

Surviving comes with great consequences to face. You must do what you think is necessary to stay alive and to keep moving forward. The man savagely beat his chest and started running to get the blood flow and warmth back into his body. At one point, the man remembered “A tale of a man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved.” Which led him to the thought of killing the dog to survive.

lead his readers to believe that the man will suffer a tragedy in the end

He is with his Alaskan husky wolf-dog who is the only one beside him. The man is a relative newcomer to the Yukon, but somehow the cold doesn’t faze him. As he is walking across a trail that goes over the top of a creek he suddenly falls through and gets wet up to his shins. Before the trip, an old wise man warns him that it is too cold to travel, but the young man doesn’t listen and moves onward. He quickly begins to start a fire to dry himself and his wet clothes. However, like the foolish man that he is, he starts the fire right under a spruce tree. The fire ends up melting the snow and it falls onto the fire extinguishing it and any hopes of starting another one. The man then makes a decision to kill the dog and stick his hands inside its warm belly. He realizes that he cannot do this because his body is so cold that it will not allow him to. He then attempts to run around trying to let friction heat his body. This is a futile attempt. The man then begins to fall into a deep, deadly, relaxing sleep. The dog begins to come closer to him and smells death on the man. The dog then runs back towards camp where the others are.

The main theme of “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is naturalism. Jack London has his own experiences in the Youkan that have been said to have links to the story To Build a Fire and his naturalistic viewpoints that have even influenced Ernest Hemmingway. This story was written in the early 1900’s describing a man and his dog who are new to the Yukon. The man and his dog plan on a nine-hour hike in -75° F weather. He is warned not to travel alone but the man thinking he is above nature takes on the adventure alone with his dog. As the sky begins and he begins to freeze because he broke through the ice. He builds a fire to thaw his limbs. Being an ignorant person, he builds the fire underneath a tree with snow on its branches causing the

Jack London's To Build a fire begins with a hiker in the Yukon, setting out to test his abilities with his large loyal dog at his side. At the start of the story there is a hint that things will not go as planned because it mentions how clear the day was, and the lack of sun and lack of worry on the man's part seems to be a foreshadowing of events to come, the man was experienced and should have known better to take nature for granted like he was doing. The hiker also had been warned by an old native man that hiking in negative 50 degree weather could have dangerous consequences and yet the man chose to ignore the old man's warning. In the whole story the man brushes off the cold temperatures even when he begins to feel symptoms of frostbite, like his face becoming numb, his fingers and toes start to freeze and he even doesn't have anything to protect his face from the harshness of the arctic temperatures.

Many people often brag that they are “one with nature” and consider themselves the outdoors type. However, when put into hard situations that occur in the wilderness, several people come to realize that they are not as experienced as they had hoped for. When trekking through the outdoors, people need to have a partner with them, which is what the main character learned in Fire. He believed that he was skilled, but when put to the test, the man struggled immensely and ended up perishing due to his lack of preparation. A wise man once stated, “By falling to prepare, you are preparing to fail” (Franklin). In Jack London’s To Build a Fire, three major mistakes were made, which were not heeding advice given, not taking into account his surroundings, and believing he could live inside a dog.

Before he can realize his mistake, “The snow fell without waring upon the man and the fire, and the fire was dead.” Not only has this man’s mistake cost him the fire, it doused him in freezing snow and now he lacks a means to warm his wet clothes and body. The man fails to create an effective third fire, thus depriving him and the dog of warmth. This makes lose control and he “turned and he ran along the creek bed on the old trail.” This event shows how far the man himself has fallen from confident hiker to a hysterical madman. Despite he renewed interest in living, he runs out of energy and falls to the ground, dying moments later.

The setting in "To Build a Fire" is one of the most important roles of the short story,

Jack London uses internal and external conflicts throughout the story to express the central theme of arrogance. The author uses an external conflict of Man vs. Nature to show the arrogance that the man shows throughout the story. This is the most important as because due to an external conflict it will eventually lead to the man’s death. This is shown by, “It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained,” (“To Build A Fire” 498). This quote relates to the theme as the man knew how cold it

No matter what type of story you are reading, setting always plays a key element in producing the desired effect. Jack London's short story To Build A Fire provides an excellent example of this. In this story, a man hikes across a snow and ice covered plane towards the encampment where he is supposed to meet up with more travelers like himself. The setting of this story is one of the northernmost most areas of the earth, the Yukon. The man must hike across this area for approximately thirty-six miles before he reaches the camp at which he is expected. The constantly dropping temperature further complicates the man's hike. When he begins his journey at nine o'clock in the morning it is