To Build A Fire Essay

To Build a Fire is a short story written by novelist Jack London in 1902. The story is about a man and his dog’s frozen journey on the Yukon Trail to camp in the Coast Mountains, Alaska. At the beginning of the story we get some characterization for the main character as he excuses a breathing break by taking a time check on his watch. This already tells the audience that the main character is a little bit of an egotistical douchebag. When he starts off again, he realizes it's cold, like really cold. The man underestimates it though, thinking it was something like 50 degrees below. It was actually 75 degrees below, 107 degrees below frost. The man goes on. This is our first example of human error in the story. We later find out the man knows

Here we get some information on the only other “character” in the story, the unnamed dog. The dog is practically a domesticated wolf, and has natural instincts to hide against the cold. As it walks with the man, it wants to lay low and bury itself in the snow for insulation, as it knows you should not travel when it's negative 75 degrees. As the man and wolf travel along, the man thinks about the water pockets that hide underneath thin layers of ice and snow. These could get a man very wet and when you get wet in negative 75 degrees it is not fun. Even knowing this, the man was not very worried about the danger of freezing to death, because he always had fire on his side and could just warm back up if he got wet. He was more worried about being delayed to the camp with his boys. This is a brilliant use of foreshadowing on London’s

Realizing he could not even open his mouth to eat the food, he remembers he forgot to start a fire. He sets one, melts the ice off his face, and eats. Once finished they head up the trail again, headed to camp. The dog is still anxious about the weather. Going for about half an hour, the man sees no ice pockets. His curse of human error causes him to let his learned instinctual guard down, and he walks right into a puddle. Realizing he is freezing, he worries about the delay it will put on the time he gets to camp before even thinking about starting a fire. This proves his instincts are so low that he will most likely suffer from it. He starts a fire under a pine tree. Starting small, he makes a fire. Slowly, as the fire gets larger and bigger, he thaws. He can again feel his feet, and he takes off his boots and socks to let them dry. Almost as soon as he feels victorious in his accomplishment with the fire, a big hump of snow falls and puts out the flame immediately. Now he is screwed. His own laziness and unthoughtfulness caused him to put the fire up real close to a tree, and he paid the