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Man And Nature In Jack London's To Build A Fire

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Jack London tell the short story of a man traveling the Yukon trail. As this man starts the trail, he is easily on his way passing every challenge thrown at him. It is 75 degrees below zero. The man seems to be forgetting about the dangers of travelling alone on the Yukon at night in the harsh winter. All of this does not seem to matter as he is overly excited to go see his boys at a camp down the creek. Unfortunately, due to his lack of sense, the man continues down the trail as he is starting to freeze and feel the effects of the cold weather. Later in the story, London states that the man has a traveling companion. This traveling companion is a native wolf dog. Some readers may get the feeling that the dog may symbolize something in the story. Throughout the entire text, …show more content…

The main theme of London 's "To Build a Fire," is man versus nature. The man travels alone with just a native dog hoping to survive, ending up not making it through the harsh winter weather and ending up dying. Through the whole story everything keeps going downhill. For instance, the one good moment in the story, when he gets the fire lit, is soon accompanied by the worst moment when the fire is put out because of the snow falling on the fire from the trees above the fire. If the man would have just placed the fire in a more open spot and not under a canopy of trees this wouldn 't have happened. Instead, the man thinking instinctively and not out of the box, places it under the trees where the branches are easily located so he doesn’t have to travel far in the cold. Because of this very action, he might have practically taken his own life. He tried to light another fire in a different location, but it was too late. The cold had taken him over and his hands were too numb to be able to light the match to start the fire. If the man would have just thought about what would happen after he lit the fire this would not have happened, and he might have survived his adventure and seen his boys at the

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Unfortunately for him, at the beginning of his journey, the cold did not bother The Man. He states, “it was cold and uncomfortable, and that was all…it did not lead him to consider his weaknesses as a creature affected by temperature” (London 2). The man knew it was extremely cold, but failed to recognize the intense gravity of his situation: he did not process it as a viable threat. Eventually, this lack of fear caused his unfortunate demise. As the story goes on, his environment begins to

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The short story, To Build A Fire by Jack London demonstrates the man’s powerlessness compared to the forces of nature. It is the man’s ego that prompts him to challenge nature by embarking on the journey while he understands well that he will encounter the full wrath of extreme weather condition. Additionally, the man 's powerlessness is seen in the setting of the action, his lack of identity and the author 's depiction of the mightiness of nature. Besides, the protagonist effort to overcome nature is faced with equal efforts from the latter to defeat him as seen in his failure to light a fire. It is for these reasons that this paper maintains that the story, To Build A Fire by Jack London, is a true manifestation of the conflict between man and nature and which although the former initiate he losses to the latter in

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The author continuously repeats how cold the temperature is, painting a picture of a kind of loneliness and cruel (surrounding conditions). He also relates the man 's state of being along the mood of the story. "He was not much given to thinking. " He had only mind to reaching his goal and not much thought about the temperature. "

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