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The Powers Of Nature In Jack London's To Build A Fire

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If man were to face nature, man will always lose if not accompanied by another. The powers of nature are much stronger than a single human body. Sometimes nature can be cruel, and other times it can be beautiful. In the story of, “To Build a Fire”, the character faces nature head on, alone. He had no company other than the dog that followed him around. This overall, led to his destruction. Jack London’s character believed he could fight through the excruciating cold, and in the end, meet up with “the boys” (London, Paragraph 4). At first, he did well in being able to keep his body temperature up by rubbing his cheekbones and nose with the back of his mittened hands, walking to keep his feet from going numb, and also beating his hands against his sides to keep the sensation and blood supply full (London, Paragraph 10). Though as he was walking, towards the end of the story, he fell through some ice into the water of a hot spring (London, Paragraph 22), which eventually lead to his death. He tried desperately to get the sensation back into his hands and feet for him to be able …show more content…

This is a story about a man named Christopher McCandless, who graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He informed his parents that he is going to spend the summer traveling in his yellow Datsun to “live off the land”. Throughout the story, it showed him going through the struggles of the harsh nature. He eventually died at the end of the book from apparent starvation and his body was found by hikers and hunters in a bus (Into the Wild Book). This book refers to Jack London’s story because it shows them both living off the land, one in a harsh cold, and with very little resources to stay alive. Both of them have a journey, but eventually pass away in the end, though both struggled to stay alive throughout their story. Christopher McCandless had no one with him on his journey, just like John London’s character, and they both ended up

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Is nature here to help or harm humans? The short stories “To Build a Fire” and “The Outcast of Poker Flat”, written by Jack London and Bret Harte respectively, explore this idea. Both authors portray nature as apathetic and indifferent towards human beings and use literary devices such as imagery to accomplish this goal. In the short story “To Build a Fire,” Jack London shows the reader how cold and unforgiving nature can be to humans.

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In August of 1992, a man by the name of Chris McCandless was found dead in a bus located north of Mt. McKinley Alaska, by a group of hunters. The book, Into the wild, is written by Jon Krakauer who takes on the task of finding out who exactly was Chris McCandless. Through the book, we find out about his childhood, his school life and his travels. The book gives us a sense of who he was a person, his childhood life, and his thoughts on the world. Many argue that his death was a suicide but one can argue that his death was exactly the opposite.

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1365 Words | 6 Pages

Jack London had been an American novelist and is known for works such as The Call of the Wild, which McCandless greatly admired. Chris McCandless had greatly admired Jack London, going as far as carving “Jack London is King” at what came to be the site of his death. The Jack London quote used in the epigraph describes a scene in the forest but uses bitter imagery- yet somehow still romanticises it. “Alex” was unable to ever see past the facade London had built- given that London had hardly ever spent time in the wild himself and most definitely nowhere near as intense as Alaska. This chapter had described how he had been found and this quote leads back to that because though Chris was intelligent, he did not understand that London had to make nature sound beautiful.

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903 Words | 4 Pages

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, tells the story of a young man named Christopher McCandless who decided to go and survive in the wilderness of Alaska without correct preparation. McCandless was a man with as transcendentalist-like mindset, an adventurer, an explorer, and a hiker. He migrated away from civilization and society with the goal of living in solitude and living his life to the fullest through nature. The audience was introduced to McCandless’ views towards society through McCandless’ journey through Alaska, and the depressing yet inspiring events that led up to his death. Krakauer creates emotional appeals to connect him with McCandless to credit himself as a writer, as well as to develop the audiences’ feelings of McCandless.

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In “Into the Wild, ” Jon Krakauer explores the human compulsion with nature and the purpose of life. Throughout the book, Krakauer documents the intoxicating/galvanizing life and death of Christopher Jon McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, a young hitchhiker that embarked on an Alaskan Odyssey to explore himself and the wilderness. Like many before him, McCandless thought that he could give is his life meaning by pursuing a relationship solely with nature. McCandless had “an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature. (85)

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Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the novel and film Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, is not your average guy. Driven by his minimalist ideals and hate for society, he challenged the status quo and embarked on a journey that eventually lead to his unforeseen demise. A tragic hero, defined by esteemed writer, Arthur Miller, is a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on tragedy. Christopher McCandless fulfills the role of Miller’s tragic hero due to the fact that his tragic flaw of minimalism and aversion towards society had lead him to his death.

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In the non-fiction book Into the wild by Jon Krakauer and the short story “to build a fire” by Jack London, two authors describe “similar” lives “in the wild” with the worst ending. However,same process could lead to various answers, through comparing and contrasting the Into the Wild and To build a fire, readers could comprehend the homologous but different views for the nature lives from two authors. First of all, Chris McCandless in Into the wild and The man in “to build a fire” have similar but different motives for being out “in the wild”. McCandless is a talented young man who born in a relatively wealthy family, he never need to worries about money and life. But because of his desires for nature and some conflicts with his parents,McCandless

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Chris McCandless, the protagonist of Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild," was a young man who sought solitude and adventure in the wilderness. He was deeply inspired by two literary works: "To Build a Fire," a short story by Jack London, and "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," an essay by Henry David Thoreau. These works had a profound impact on McCandless's worldview and ultimately contributed to his decision to embark on a journey into the Alaskan wilderness, where he tragically lost his life. "To Build a Fire" is a story about a man who becomes stranded in the Alaskan wilderness during a cold winter day. Despite his best efforts, the man is unable to start a fire to keep warm and eventually freezes to death.

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Christopher McCandless, whose life and journey are the main ideas of the novel “Into the Wild”, was about an adolescent who, upon graduating from Emory College, decided to journey off into the Alaskan wilderness. He had given away his savings of $25,000 and changed his name to Alex Supertramp. His voyage to Alaska took him two years during which he traveled all across the country doing anomalous jobs and making friends. He inevitably made it to Alaska were he entered the wilderness with little more than a few books, a sleeping bag and a ten pound bag of rice. A couple months after his first day in the wild, his body was found in an abandoned bus.

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The reader gets to join McCandless in his adventure across the country as he invents a new life for himself. He embraces the ideas and morals of Thoreau and Emerson in his journey. In the book, a man by the man by the name of Westerberg discusses about how McCandless is not destroying his possessions and journey around the wild because the wild he is suicidal or unintelligent. “You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent… He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”

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674 Words | 3 Pages

Because he is not prepared, McCandless dies in a bus he finds. Chris had every intention of coming back to civilization, but sadly eats something poisonous and is unable to get it out of his system. Prior to eating the poisonous food, Chris tries to cross the river that he had easily traveled through in the spring. Since it is now winter, he is unable to do so and is forced to retreat back to the bus. Though the book focuses on McCandless, it tells brief stories of other men who have gone into nature and passed away as well.

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1180 Words | 5 Pages

Jack London 's writing is harsh poetry. He describes scenes in such detail. Reading his work makes you picture how the scenes look in your head. He shows a deeper meaning in the events of his stories(Napierkowski). The point of view of the story is third person limited omniscient.

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Based on a real story, Into the Wild can make us think from different perspectives about what the main character Christopher McCandless did. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a dramatic but also remarkable story from a young, newly graduated, college student that escaped for a long wild journey but never came back. As time passes throughout the book, the reader may notice how the main character interacts with society and nature, finally McCandless dies in the wild but even though he was struggling for survival he died happy. Some people never get out of their comfort zone, others are tired of it and retire from their comfort zone to have different experiences in life, some are good enough or some are terrible.

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This paper asserts that in the story To Build A Fire, Jack London compares the man 's ego and powers to the forces of nature by depicting a contest between these two initiated by the man but one that nature always wins. First, the audience is introduced to the man’s ego that tells him that he can challenge the force of nature. The narrator says, “the distant trail, no sun in the sky, the great cold, and the strangeness of it all-Had no effects on the man” (London 65). Besides, if the man’s ego

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1.) Roughly how much of London 's story is devoted to describing the setting? What particular details make it memorable? In Jack London 's "To Build a Fire", he uses setting to allow the reader to experience the trip and how cold it is by very powerfully in showing/representing the mood and visual for the story.

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