Comparison Of Into The Wild And To Build A Fire

In the non-fiction book Into the wild by Jon Krakauer and the short story “to build a fire” by Jack London, two authors describe “similar” lives “in the wild” with the worst ending. However,same process could lead to various answers, through comparing and contrasting the Into the Wild and To build a fire, readers could comprehend the homologous but different views for the nature lives from two authors.

First of all, Chris McCandless in Into the wild and The man in “to build a fire” have similar but different motives for being out “in the wild”. McCandless is a talented young man who born in a relatively wealthy family, he never need to worries about money and life. But because of his desires for nature and some conflicts with his parents,McCandless

Walt’s divorce and “unmoral” make McCandless think that his childhood is a joke, his sense of outrage over injustice in the world at large grew.He believes that the economic imbalance and excessive consumption caused the injustice in the society. So, he want to get away from his parents,from the modern life and get into the wild,live with nature; to chase the enlightenment from nature and find the meaning of life. In contrast, in to build a fire, The Man go to Alaska to search for gold in the wildness, in the story, he get into the wild in order to meet his friends. In Jack London’s view, “But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old clam on the left fork of henderson creek, where the boys were already”(598) The Man basically doesn’t care about the nature, even hate nature. He just want to overcome the harsh environment and have fun with friends. He go to the wild for financial

both authors implies their opinions about the life “in the wild”. For McCandless, he doesn’t really prepares many equipments or skills for his journey to Alaska. It makes him faces many difficulties and even lead him to the worst ending. K gives the example, “Because he lacked a good ,ap, the cable spanning the river also remained incognito.Studying the Teklanika violent flow, McCandess thus mistakenly concluded that is was impossible to reach the eastern shore”(174). McCandless shows many properties of transcendentalism during his journey.He wants to get closer to the nature, has extremely strong confident in himself and against materialism.But he is too naive to notices that nature is not always kind, it will give different trial to the challengers who want to live with it. He never prepares the way to go back, and the cruel nature blocked his former way. Then, he dies in the “magic” bus. In additional, The Man is a completely layman for the life in the wild, he is keeping making mistakes. Jack London tells, “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. But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire”(605). In the quote, The Man makes one of the biggest mistake in his life, the fire he built is exterminated by the snow from trees, then directly lead him to death.The