Jack London's To Build A Fire

In “To Build a Fire,” Jack London presents the story of a man against nature as he tries to survive in the harsh winter of the Yukon in the early 1900’s. He begins a nine-hour hike through, temperatures as low as -75 degrees Fahrenheit, and he plans to meet up with friends in the area. With him is a local husky, with whom he has little companionship. The narrator builds a fire to warm himself. However, as the fire starts to reach a good warming point, snow falls and douses the fire. Finally realizing that things are getting drastic, the man starts running for the camp in desperation, with hopes of warming his body and possibly getting help. Eventually though he falls from exhaustion. While on the ground, he falls asleep and

The story “To Build a Fire” written by Jack London has two nearly identical versions published in 1902 and 1908 respectively. The latter is better-known and more thought-provoking because of the protagonist’s death. To begin with, the journey takes place on a cold winter day in Klondike, consists of a man and his dog. The man is ignorant of the extreme coldness and feels confident about travelling alone at fifty degrees below zero. However, he breaks through a thin skin of ice unexpectedly and wets himself halfway to the knees. In order to dry his feet, the man builds a fire, only to have it extinguished by a pile of snow unloaded from a tree. He tries to set up another fire, yet all attempts has failed. The man panics and strives to unfreeze his body by running. Not surprisingly, his efforts are useless, and the man dies of hypothermia at last. The author effectively supports the central conflict of man versus nature and gives hints about the man’s death as resolution by using appropriate title, descriptive setting, and a large amount of foreshadowing.

In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” a man freezes to death in the Yukon. His unfortunate fate could have been avoided if he simply would have respected the power of nature and recognized the warning signs. It is easy to identify three signs that he shouldn’t have ventured into the Yukon off the trail fifty below zero and to never mess around with nature or you might just find out, you will not make it out alive. “His spit froze before it had even hit the ground.” (232) this indicated that it was below 70¬¬¬¬¬ below zero.

Between the years 1985 and 2012, 5.4 million people died due to cold - 20 times the amount of heat-related deaths. This is exactly what happened to the man in Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire.” In the story, a nameless man hikes along the Yukon trail, with only a dog for a companion. This man is ill-experienced, and ultimately dies on his trek from one camp to another. Three things led to the character’s death, which were all his own decisions: building a fire under a tree, traveling alone, and ignoring valuable advice.

In the narrative “To Build a Fire”, the setting was taking place in the Yukon. The setting impacted the plot because if it wasn’t for the weather that was below 50 degrees, there wouldn’t be a story. The whole story was about a man trying to build a fire in a weather that cold. If it wasn’t for the setting and the weather in that setting the man wouldn't need that fire.

“The trouble with him was that he was not able to imagine. He was quick and ready in things of life, but only in the things, and not in their meanings” (London 65). To Build A Fire is written by Jack London and is based in the deep backwoods of the Alaskan wilderness. The man in the story has his mouth frozen shut and his only companion is a wolf dog as he makes his journey back to the campsite to where he belongs to. Jack London has many symbolistic items in To Build A Fire. This includes fire as a symbol of life, snow as a symbol for death, and the boys at the camp as a symbol for security.

Your first and last name Ms. Krick English 8 29 April 2024 Title goes here Surviving in the wilderness can be harsh, difficult, and oftentimes deadly. Many people have died in the wilderness because they were not ready mentally, physically, and emotionally; the three key points to surviving in everyday life and the wild. Obviously, some are more important than others, but they are all essential. Having emotional stability is essential to surviving, not just in the wild, but everywhere in everyday life. This is proven in Jack London’s story, “To Build A Fire” in which a man climbs a dangerous, winter mountain.

Jack London’s story “To Build A Fire” is set at Yukon during the gold rush. A man is walking by foot to meet his friends at Old Camp in Henderson Creek with his wolf-like dog in freezing temperatures. The man who has a “lack of imagination” is a newcomer to the Yukon environment, thereby unprepared for his journey in seventy-five degrees below zero temperature. The weather being colder than he anticipated, causing frostbite and numbness, gives the man no choice but “to build a fire”. The man doesn’t want to lose time, so after warming up he continues to travel. The dog doubts the journey, and continues to travel instead of sticking to the safe warm fire. When the man reaches Henderson Creek, he walks across a frozen river. He then reflects on a conversation with an old man from Sulphur Creek.

Do you love a good furtive? In To Build a Fire, Jack London gives students a short-term look inside the strong external view. Man and the Natural World, Foolishness, and Pride is a big take in this short story. In the third paragraph of this story, the speaker tells us all about the suffering with the man that he is disadvantaged of the mind. The absence of his imagination is an important fragility that will lead the man to create silly choices. The speaker marks a huge deal out of the point that the man has no imagination. The Yukon desert couldn’t care less. He’s just another kindly figure it can freeze. Some individuals may debate that each person has imagination. That everyone holds an assured mark of imagination capability. Out in the cold Yukon, you probably don’t think that having an imagination is going to help you much, but it will. As a reader, we must think about what good it would do the man to think enormously about the huge wilderness around the man. After all he is not a writer or a storyteller. He just want to go get some bacon. LOL. So why recommend he’s foolish for not having imagination?

To Build a Fire Jack London expresses the unforgiving conditions of nature by writing of a man who is roaming through the Yukon, with no company but a dog, and how in the end his stubbornness and Mother Nature’s brute weather conditions and nature’s inability to care for the man ultimately lead to his demise.

The dreadful scenery has been fully characterized in Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” where the day is being described as cold and grey, having no sun or clouds during the day, and having ice-covered ground overlapped with snow on top. The setting is as important as the man in this story because the setting describes all the situations the man is put through and has to deal with throughout the story. The setting may be more important than the character with its beauty of a frozen tundra, with its darkness from the lack of sunshine, and with its mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail.

James E. Faust once said, “Unfortunately, some of our greatest tribulations are the result of our own foolishness and weakness and occur because of our own carelessness or transgression.” In To Build a Fire by Jack London, a man is on a journey to get to his camp but the problem is that it is seventy degrees below zero, and he is travelling only with a dog to help him. The man, unfortunately, dies at the end of the story from frostbite after falling into an almost frozen creek and not being able to make a fire in order to warm himself up. One cause of his death is the man’s arrogance. The second cause of his death is his carelessness and hasty decisions. The man makes terrible decisions leading to his death, it is not nature’s fault.

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.

In America, drug addiction is everywhere. In fact, according to CBS News, more than one in three Americans used opioid painkillers in 2015 alone (Thompson, “1 in 3 Americans Prescribed Opioids”). This number is startlingly high, especially considering the fact that America is in the midst of a heroin epidemic. There have been many proposals on how to lower and treat drug addiction, such as having pharmaceutical companies stop offering monetary incentives for doctors to write prescriptions or jailing non-violent repeat offenders, but sadly nothing has been created and integrated in a way that makes it conducive to those suffering from addiction rather than focusing only on putting the minds of other civilians at ease. In order to treat drug addiction effectively, America must come together as a nation with compassion and empathy, allowing those who are addicted to seek help and safety rather than judgement and harsh treatment. Too often do people look only at the addiction, rather than the larger issue at play- the fact that we refuse to treat sufferers of drug addictions as real human beings who deserve a chance at rehabilitation. Because of this, I believe that drug addiction should be treated as a physical illness through means of comprehensive care, compassion, and rehabilitation programs. If we treat addiction as the serious issue it is, we can help to reduce and possibly even eliminate drug addiction.