Jack London's To Build A Fire

It’s Lit

The story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London takes place in the wilderness of the Yukon trail. A newcomer to the trail travels with his husky wolf-dog to meet his friends at camp. Unfazed by the cold, the man chooses to ignore nature’s warnings and continues to tread through the vast and frigid Yukon trail in order to get to the camp by six o’clock, but he struggles to survive because he cannot keep a fire lit. The story reveals the theme of naturalism and nature’s brutal indifference to humanity’s existence and actions. The man acts with pride and stupidity which leads to the bitter and unrelenting Yukon trail punishing him. Although the cold and gray setting of the dangerous Yukon trail is a factor that affects the conflict and creates

This event delays him an hour because he has to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. To build a fire in order to prevent his legs and feet from going numb, he is forced to remove his mittens which ironically causes his fingers to freeze and lose any sensation of touch. The man’s inability to consider consequences causes him to make this mistake which results in the further numbing of his feet and other body parts as he exposes more of his skin to the freezing cold during the process of trying to build a

Near the end of the story, as the man succumbs to the freezing cold and accepts his fate, he mumbles, “You were right, old hoss; you were right,” referring to the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He realizes how wrong he was and that traveling with another person would have helped him avoid many of the complications that he had faced. Regret is a feeling that many, if not all, people have felt because we tend to make decisions against the advice that is given to us because we refuse to believe that we are wrong at