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Theme Of Survival In Laurence Gonzales To Build A Fire

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Deepak Chopra once said, “The masculine energy was about survival. The male was the hunter who risked his life and had to be in the fight-flight mode.” When pertaining to survival, the main character in “To Build a Fire” by Jack London failed to follow three main steps in Laurence Gonzales’ nonfiction trade book, “Deep Survival.” The main character failed to stay calm, to think, analyze, and plan, and to never give up his trek through the pure untrampled white snow.
One reason the main character died is because he did not follow the step of staying calm (Gonzales 96). In his crisis, remaining placid, a detrimental key while in a critical situation, was unachievable by the protagonist of the story. For example, when the man built the second …show more content…

One reason as to why the main character was brought to his death was when he brought to his final panic. When forced to acknowledge reality for one of the first times on this journey, the man began to think about the lack of feeling and the deathly frozen portions of his body, along with the severity of them (London 90). If he were to have kept these negative thoughts out of his mind, the main character may have been able to think more clearly and resourcefully in order to find a new source of action. Next, the man gave up when he thought about the boys back at camp finding his body later on. “Suddenly he [the main character] found himself with them [the boys], coming along the trail and looking for himself” (London 90). Allowing himself to be a fallen victim to the negativity accompanied with these thoughts, the man was, in result, giving up. The last way that the man gave up was when he succumbed to all of the persuasions of the negativity, and he let himself go. “Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever know” (London 91). This was the last sign of the man giving up; with no hope left for himself, the main character decided to no longer go on with the persistency and determination that he had had in the past. These ways of giving up are what lead the man in London’s story to his

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