Normally when we think of conflict we think of a man vs. man conflict but we fail to realize that the biggest conflict we can have is the man vs. nature. Man vs. nature is when the character in the story has a conflict with something of nature.Jack London uses the conflict of man vs. nature in “To build a fire” to show that humans lack mind, trust, and humbleness. As humans we tend to think we know a lot and go straight to actions instead of thinking in depth about what we’re really getting ourselves into. For example in the story when it stated “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination”. This indicated that the character knew what he was doing but he didn’t realize the significance of the situation and he lacked the imagination to …show more content…
In other words this is trying to illustrate how the canine knew that it was too cold and it was trying to communicate it, but the man lacked trustworthiness. However as the story progressed the dog stopped showing the man how he felt. This was stated in the story in this quote “So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man”. The protagonist also lacked humbleness in the story. He knew all the things the old timer had told him to prepare for in encountering the Yukon in the fall, but his self-esteem got in the way of him doing the thing he knew was right. He felt as if he was better than the old timers and that he didn’t need to do what they did because he was better and tougher than them like stated in the quote “Those old timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought, All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right”. As a result of all the obstacles nature presented him he humbled himself “The old timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice” The biggest problem in a man vs. nature conflict is that we underestimate nature. We feel like we are invincible when in reality we are fragile beings and nature is