Marcus Aurelius once said “Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.” The meaning behind this quote is that someone shouldn’t be afraid of death because it’s inevitable. In both of the stories, “To Build a Fire” and “The Law of Life”, the main characters face the inevitable: death. The main characters handle death in different ways but in similar places. The stories “To Build a Fire” and “The Law of Life” have many similarities and differences in their setting, characters, and theme.
In the story, “To Build a Fire”, the story is set in the Yukon Trail in Northern Canada. The landscape of the trail is snowy and icy. In the story, the temperature is fifty degrees below zero. Examples of how cold it is on the trail is shown when it says in the story “As he turned to go, he forced some water from his mouth as an experiment. There was a sudden noise that surprised him. He tried it again. And again, in the air, before they could fall to the snow, the drops of water became ice that broke with a noise. He knew that at 50 below zero water from the mouth made a noise when it hit the snow. But this had done that in the air.”(London, p.65). Another example of how cold it is outside is shown when in the story it says “Also, the man had tobacco in his mouth. The ice held his lips so tightly together that he could not empty the juice from his mouth. The result was a long piece of yellow ice hanging from his lips.”(London, p.67). The setting of the story is