James Genius
Mr. Walker
English 2; Period 2
26 February 2010
The Man Who Knew Less Than His Dog: A Literary Study of “To Build A Fire”
In the exposition of Jack London’s suspenseful short story, “To Build A Fire”, the reader meets an unnamed protagonist who takes an alternative route away from the conservative Yukon trail in order to scout the landscape for logging in the spring. This cheechaquo, or newcomer to the Alaskan winter, is hoping to supplement his tentative Gold Rush earnings by shipping logs down stream and thus takes his husky on a walk along Henderson Creek in 50 degree below zero temperature. The anonymous cheechaquo disregards the advice of an old timer at Sulphur Creek and naively travels alone on an unfamiliar path expecting to arrive at camp and meet his boys before night fall. Trouble ensues when he first pushes his dog forward to test the strength of the creek’s solidity and soon he experiences the same fate as his husky: he falls into a pool of water which freezes his foot halfway up to the knee. As the man hastily builds a fire to warm his feet, dry his moccasins and survive the brutal cold which has now depreciated to 75 degrees below zero, he makes the fatal error of building his fire beneath a snow-laden tree.
Soon both him and his fire are doused with snow and his situation drastically worsens. During his next attempt to build a fire, the man makes grave errors due to the numbness and hypothermia that has begun to set in: he drops the matches, chokes on match smoke, severely burns his hands and ultimately douses his own fire due to clumsiness. As desperation and panic sets in he considers killing his dog and using its carcass to warm his hands but because of the animal’s strong instinct and the severe numbness of his hands, that plan fails and the man reaches a climactic moment on his journey. His epiphany that this is a life and death situation alters his behavior by setting him into a panic that leads him to run wildly attempting to warm up, extreme out of body hallucinations about his survival and finally a resolution of sleeping off to death in a similar way that an anaesthesia puts one into a deep sleep. Soon the husky smells the scent of death on him and departs for camp where as the third-person omniscient narrator informs readers “there were other food providers and fire providers” (650).
As a result of these plot events, the reader can clearly see two emerging central conflicts. One such conflict involves man versus nature, specifically a cheechaquo in direct opposition to extreme cold weather where 107 degrees of frost has settled on the land and the thermometer measures 75 degrees below zero. In this battle the man pitches himself against the full might of a bitter cold that would challenge even the most expert hikers who’ve lived in the Yukon. This man, at first, scoffs at what he believes is superficial advice from a “rather womanish” old-timer and travels solo with minimal survival equipment and more importantly, little to no experience. The story clearly declares that this extreme cold is superior to the man’s abilities.
Additionally, the story focuses on an internal conflict. The man struggles with the reality that becomes more and more overt as he walks that it is colder than he assumed and that he is truly at a loss out on this path. His logical brain tells him the facts of the situation but not the meaning or implications for it. He knows it is cold but he does not consider what that cold can do to him therefore when he begins to feel and see the palpable results of the cold, it sends him into shock and panic. Now he struggles with himself to stay calm and effective in his actions but it is too late and he loses his cool-headedness, which hastens his impending death.
Consequently, the former conflict produces one of the central themes in this story, which is that humans must accept their limitations and mortality in the face of a formidable force such as nature. In this particular story, the author’s message is that the Yukon is to be respected and feared for its ability to humble even the most arrogant man who feels he can conquer its extreme cold. Although humans have made significant advances in mathematics, science, art, literature, and technology, there are still boundaries they should simply agree to acknowledge rather than engage in battle with. This seems to be the message Jack London wants to impart to his readers especially given the type of character he utilizes in this story as well as his skillful use of dramatic irony to create suspense in readers. London employs a naïve, literal-minded man who relies purely on his logical abilities and deterministic attitude to survive even as emotional tension builds up in the reader who has to watch him struggle over and over at surviving. London adeptly puts this kind of man who is a symbol of arrogance in humans in conflict with nature to prove that it is wise to accept the power of nature.
Finally, the character in this story, although anonymous, can be characterized as foolish and abusive. Both these qualities can be exemplified using several key moments in the text. One such event occurs when the man physically compels his husky to go ahead of him in order to test the sturdiness of the creek. He is willing to use the dog as an experiment for his own benefit. Not only is the dog expendable in his eyes but the dog seems to only be useful to the man when he wants it to be. They share a master-slave relationship which only improves the man’s life and does very little for the dog. Additionally, the man continually denies the advice of the old-timer to travel with a partner in such radical weather, even calling the old-timer “womanish”. This indicates a deep level of folly in the man who would reject counsel from one who has lived longer and directly experienced such weather conditions. It would seem then that this cheechaquo deserves the fate he faces for his abuse and foolish behavior.
