The Man's Instinct In To Build A Fire, By Jack London

When a human enters a survival situation the thing what would kill them faster is knowledge without experience. In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London there are two creatures trying to survive a man and a wolf, one going of knowledge and the other by pure instinct. The man by using his knowledge made the situation worse than if he followed his instinct. The man in the story uses knowledge as a basis for confidence in himself, even though he does lack proper knowledge on how to survive. He is overconfident in his ability to survive since he has not experienced extreme cold, he knows nothing about the dangers. Arrogant and overconfident are ways to describe the man as someone warns him of the danger of the cold, but he shrugs off the warning and keeps going on the trail. The man’s knowledge of the cold and rationality about the situation leads to a sense of control over the situation. The man had no experience when it came to braving the cold and shallow knowledge when it came to proper gear needed to survive the temperatures. The second biggest cause for his death was simply inexperience. Never having faced “real cold” the man thought he could wear some mittens and a warm jacket in such extreme cold. Knowledge without

The wolf follows not because of any sort of kinship, but because the man might build a fire which would warm up the wolf. Through the story the wolf instinctively knows just how dangerous the cold is and the fear associated with it. It follows the man even though it can survive itself just to get a little extra warmth from the man’s fire. If the wolf wanted to it could leave and curl up on a pile of snow without consequence. When the man would leave the fire the wolf would stay by it to discourage further travel through the cold, right after is when the man fell through some ice into water. The wolf followed the man all the way until he died, then ran off to look for new sources of