FREE ESSAY ON TO BUILD A FIRE

TO BUILD A FIRE

The significance of the words dying and death in Jack London's 1910 novel, To Build a Fire
continuously expresses the man's dwindling warmth and bad luck in his journey along the
Yukon trail to meet the boys at the camp. London associate dying with the man's
diminishing ability to stay warm in the frigid Alaskan climate. The main character
predicament slowly gets worse one level at a time finally resulting in death.
The narrator informs the reader the man lacks personal experience traveling in the Yukon
terrain. The old-timer warned the man about the harsh realities of the Klondike. The
confident main character thinks of the old-timer at Sulphur Creek as womanish. Along the
trail, the man falls into a hidden spring and attempts to build a fire to dry his socks
and keep warm. With his wet feet quickly growing numb, he realizes he has only one chance
to successfully build a fire or face the harsh realities of the Yukon at one-hundred nine
degrees below freezing. Falling snow from a tree blots out the fire and the character
realizes he had just heard his own sentence of death. Jack London introduces death to the
reader in this scene. The man realizes a second fire must be built without fail. The
man's mind begins to run wild with thoughts of insecurity and death when the second fire
fails. He recollects the story of a man who kills a steer to stay warm and envisions
himself killing his dog and crawling into the carcass to warm up so he can build a fire
to save himself.
As the man slowly freezes, he realizes he is in serious trouble and can no longer make
excuses for himself. Acknowledging he would never get to the camp and would soon be stiff
and dead, he tries to clear this morbid thought from his mind by running down the trail
in a last ditch effort to pump blood through his extremities. The climax of the story
describes the man picturing his body completely frozen on the trail. He falls into the
snow thinking, he is bound to freeze anyway and freezing was not as bad as people
thought. There were a lot worse ways to die. The man drowsed off into the most
comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog looked on creeping closer,
filling his nostrils with the scent of death. London's portrayal of the man does not
initially give the reader the theme of dying, but slowly develops the theme as the story
develops. The story doesn't mention death until the last several pages. The main
character changes from an enthusiastic pioneer to a sad and desperate man. The conclusion
of the story portrays the man accepting his fate and understands the old-timer at Sulphur
Creek had been right; no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below.
Typically, short stories written in the early 1900's often conclude the story with a
death or tragedy. London's story is no exception. This story follows the pattern by
illustrating events leading up to and including death.