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Rhetorical Devices Used In To Build A Fire

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Jack London’s short story, To Build a Fire, takes place in the remote and bitterly cold wilderness of the Yukon in Alaska. It is about the journey of a man versus mother nature, a common aspect of any Naturalistic story. Naturalism is a subgenre of realism that consists of themes that typically focuses natural forces, specifically; heredity, the environment, economic circumstances, or simply luck or chance. It can also focus on man versus society or political institutions. Jack London uses rhetorical devices such as personification in order to give human characteristics to the environment. He also uses foreshadowing to exemplify the power of nature, as well as represent mother nature through the dog that accompanies the main character. From …show more content…

It gives nature a “face” so the audience can more vividly imagine what the environment looks like. It as well showcases nature as a larger being, a titan possibly if the audience knows any ancient Greek stories. For the main character, he must face the wrath of the world as he travels the road not taken in Alaska. London also personifies nature as having thin skin later in the story by saying, “He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin (36).” Again, he makes nature act more realistic by personifying it with a human …show more content…

Throughout, the dog acted strictly on instinct, whether it was fear of the man or the need to be near a fire, it represented how nature acts with or without the involvement of mankind. Another thing to mention is the dog’s ability to understand the impact of the cold weather versus the man. Mankind’s downfall in the story was the habit of underestimating events that could hurt them. The dog, acting as nature, cared about surviving in the wilderness, and it did whatever it could to live. When the man dies by the end, the dog walks away from his cold corpse to go find another “fire and food-provider” for it to survive with. Although mankind inherits instincts from nature, what they suffer from is the ability to ignore it by being able to think critically and have an advanced conscious. The dog thinks by instinct alone, and that is why it survived longer than the man could

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