5/17/2023 0 Comments To build a fire man vs natureAt this point he accepts his death and tries to meet it with dignity. He is then overwhelmed by panic and tries to make his last attempt at survival, but he fails. He regrets not listening to the old-timer’s advice (470). His lack of supplies and food forces him to submit to the forces of nature. This conflict is never resolved, resulting in the man’s death. The supporting conflict in this story is man versus nature, by struggling to survive in the cold wilderness. Man versus self helps us understand the decisions the central character makes throughout the story, and gives us a better understanding as to why he is the way he is. He doesn’t pay attention to the danger that he is facing, and attempts to overcome this danger by forcing nature to his will. The man conflicts with himself by remaining overly confident in himself and his unfamiliar surroundings. The central conflict in the story is man versus self. This portrays when the dog goes to a nearby camp of men, where he could get warmth and food because it could not provide these items on his own (471). The dog is the only companion that the man had, but unlike the man the dog uses his instinct and good sense of smell to survive in the cold wilderness. The dog is static because he doesn’t change at all throughout the story. The supporting character in this story is the dog. The man did not realize how dangerous his actions would be, resulting in his ignorance that leads him to his death. In the end he changes by confessing that he should have listened to the old timer, he also discovers that he isn’t just in danger of losing his fingers and toes, but that he is in danger of losing his life (470). The man is a dynamic character, who believes that he can conquer anything. The man’s main goal is to reach the old camp to meet his boys (458). The central character in this story is the “man”, although we never learn his name. The man tries to overcome the challenges of his environment to survive, but nature proves to be more powerful than the man. The man tries hard to meet his boys at the agreed location and time, but the thick ice makes his journey impossible. These struggles arise through the man’s arrogance and overconfidence by ignoring the signs of nature. Though the read-through took less than a half-hour, I did not skim - could not skim - “To Build a Fire.” Its elemental gut-wrenching flow leaves a lasting framework for reflection on the folly of imprudently daring Nature to do its worst - which it does.Jack London’s story, “To Build A Fire” is about a struggle of survival between man and nature, which happens through overconfidence and arrogance as opposed to experience and intelligence. His writing style features a use of journalistic narration reflecting his experiences as a reporter and war correspondent. For the next few days, my thoughts were brought back time and again to London’s blunt, spare narrative in the naturalistic tradition. He pushes through temperatures of 40 below zero, 50 below … 55 below? Unimaginable cold and its effects on man (fatal) and dog (incidental) are brought alive as London’s hiker surmounts hazards, one, then another, then … why spoil the climax? Suffice it to say that the dog, the less unlovable of the two characters, trots off at the ending. The dog in “To Build a Fire,” an unnamed Husky, is the observer/chronicler of the attempt by an also-unnamed man, a sturdy but unthinking fellow, to walk through the sunless dead of Alaskan winter. I spotted a gently used book at Watershed Books on Brookville’s Main Street, inviting me to re-read “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang,” London’s plainspoken narratives of dogs as heroic protagonists. Then the connection faded, leaving me a residual appreciation of London’s brawny man-vs.-nature confrontations.īut I had never taken the 20 minutes to read “To Build a Fire,” London’s matter-of-fact short story saga of how quickly and quietly the implacable Arctic winter can reduce us humans to frost-frozen corpses.
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