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Naturalism In Jack London's To Build A Fire

517 Words3 Pages

Jordan T. Vaughan
Darci Parken
English 2130
21 January 2017

Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a more commonly described as a naturalistic piece of writing as oppose to a bland realism work of literature. This is due to the strong use of emotional descriptive words, and the underlying innuendos to the man vs. nature theme. London illuminates the idea that man shall never think he is more powerful than nature. To understand why “To Build a Fire” represents naturalism rather than realism we must first understand what each of these terms mean. First being aware that naturalism is only an extreme form of realism, therefore they are very similar in their themes. Naturalism is focused on the environment, and nature and what role they both play …show more content…

sharp, alongside the man is a companion; a dog, who starts the journey with him but will unfortunately not end with him. Once The Man arrives at Henderson Creek he then becomes cautious of the ground beneath him. Beneath the man is a thin sheet of ice which is bound to break. The man tests this concept by sending the dog before him to see if it safe or not. The Ice then breaks and the dog's feet become wet the man then quickly removes his mittens to dry the dogs paw so that they do not freeze and become sore.
After hours of nonstop traveling the man decides it is time for lunch. The Man's fingers and beard are frozen and prevent him from any movement. Once The Man takes the food from his pocket he realizes that is too cold to eat. To overcome this, he builds a fire to warm his fingers and food.
At this point The Man is traveling in such frigid temperatures that he is considering the advice in which The Old Timer at Sulphur creek had given him prior to this journey. A form of foreshadowing is when The Old timer emphasizes how cold the Yukon Territory would get in the winter. However, The Man ignores The Old Timer's advice and continues his journey anyway with such determination. Through only this short preview of the story we are able to understand the strong use of a naturalist

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