Dramatic Irony In 'To Build A Fire'

Reason & Morality V. The World

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Attributed to Mark Twain, the saying is synonymous with a fundamental idea of the Realism era that, the "world" has no obligation to preserve human life or happiness - the universe is indifferent. This fact became apparent as realists began to realize that

"the nature of reality [was] unknowable, uncertain, and ever-shifting,” (Rahn).The Civil War confirmed these beliefs for American realists. In a war brought to the homefront, hundreds of thousands of people died in a pointless conflict.The concept of death suddenly became familiar to the masses. This sparked the beginnings of a new cultural shift. The ideas

Dramatic irony is employed to instill a subtle dread in the reader, as they must bear witness to the protagonist's plight. The man depicted in the story treks across an icy wasteland along his dog companion, and faces a journey of hardship, suffering, and an inevitable demise.The omniscient narrator guides the story along while informing the reader of the true danger of the situation, “In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero. It was seventy-five below zero... . it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained.” (London, 76-9). The man assumed it was only fifty below zero. The fatal error in human calculation would ultimately lead to the man’s demise. In the face of nature’s merciless proceedings, mankind’s reason accomplished a quicker death. In stark contrast to the glaring weaknesses of human reason, London characterizes the dog as a survivor through intuition, “It crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers,” (London, 560-66). The dog instinctively knows of the man’s death and presses forward to continue surviving. Alternatively, these actions serve as a symbolic equivalent of nature itself moving on, regardless of human death. Essentially, London develops the idea of human frailty through his

He chastises human deficiencies and instead postulates the superiority of [higher] animals. For instance, Twain criticizes the existence of [conscious] morality as a basis for human inferiority, "Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cat’s looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind," (Twain). In the context of Twain's reasoning, humans are not a particularly "special" race. But rather, humans are flawed existences that struggle to bear the weight of a moral conscience. Morality binds humanity, preventing our race from ascending beyond the “lowest animal”. Religion, politics, and society are all driven by moral dogmas. The conflicts typified in these varying belief systems find their roots in the existence of dogmatism itself. In the case of religion, Twain asserts that “[Man] is the only Religious Animal, the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight,” (Twain). Humans are quick to kill one another over a disagreement in beliefs. This fact only emphasizes mankind’s inherent weakness as beings of “reason”. Self-annihilation is certainly befitting of the weakest animal. Hence, Twain exemplifies the theme of human frailty through his satirization of