Jack London Fire

Imagine being so cold that you couldn’t even move or feel your own fingers; that is how the man in Jack London short story “To Build a Fire” felt. In the short story, a man tries to survive the cold and it’s not just cold - it’s extremely cold. The man tries to survive, but fails and gets killed. How did he die? Three things that got the man killed were that he fell in the ice trap, he built a fire under a tree with snow on it , and didn’t listen to the old man’s advice.

As stated above , the man fell in the water. The man tries to avoid what he called “traps” but he ends up falling into one. “At a place where there are no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through” (London 83). That sentence from the short story states that he broke through and went

The man builds a fire, which helped him, until he realized he built the fire in a wrong spot and then the fire went out because it was under a tree with snow on it. So, since the fire went out the man’s fingers get so cold that they got frostbite and he can’t move his fingers, so he tries to light a match with his mouth, which worked until the smoke got in his face and then he dropped it, so there goes a match. He then tries to light the rest of his matches all at once which, also failed. After all that he went through and all the matches he wasted, he calls his dog to him and tries to kill it by squeezing it because he wants heat and then the dog gets away. So what does he do next? He gets up and runs.

In addition to all of that, he didn’t take the old man seriously. The old man in “To Build a Fire” told the man not to go alone, which he did, also the old man told him that it was very cold and the man didn’t even listen to him about that. Even at the end of the book, before the man dies he says, “You were right, old hoss; you were right” (London 91). It is meaning if he would have listened to the old man he may have