Review: To Build a Fire

To Build a Fire is a story written by Jack London and was published in 1908. This story has a cold, depressing mood to it and also keeps the reader feel how desperate the main character is to survive.

SUMMARY:

The story starts as an unnamed man is making his way through the snow of Alaska. It was really cold outside. When the man spit into the air, he hears a sharp crackle sound and realize that his saliva has frozen before hitting the snow, which means the temperature must be colder than fifty degrees below zero. The man is heading to a mining camp on Henderson Creek, where his buddies are waiting for him with a nice fire and bacon. When the man finally reaches to the Henderson Creek, he needs to pass over the creek. The creek is frozen to the bottom, but there were some pockets of water which was formed by underground hot springs. He sends his dog first, and as he expected, ice breaks down and dog gets its legs wet. The man helped the dog to get the ice off and his finger go numb. The man remembered about an old man’s advice. The old man was a man who said to not travel alone in the Yukon when it’s under fifty degrees below zero. The man did a mistake of building a fire under a spruce tree. A branch of snow falls off it branches and buried the fire and the man started to build another fire. The man was not able to pull a single match from his pack of seventy. He tears one with his teeth, and when he tries to lit up the match, the smoke goes up his nose and almost makes him cough up a lung. Then the man lights all of his matches at once and uses them kindling. When the man tried to add on more fuel, his numbed hand break down the fire and scatter the piece into all direction. The man plans to kill the dog and plunge his hands into its dead body, and worm them until the feeling comes back. Then the man tackles the dog, but he is not able to kill because he cannot hold the knife or strangle the dog, so he gave up, and the dog ran away. The man decides to run as fast as he can to the mining camp. While he is running, he realizes that he will never make it. He feels ashamed about not listening to the old man's advices and decided to meet death. Lying down in snow, he falls in a comfortable sleep. The dog does not know what is going on, but later, he realizes that the man is dead. The dog howls for a while and goes to the camp where he can get food and nice place to sleep.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS:

The man is an unnamed character who is really rough and wild. In the story, an old man advised him to not go Yukon alone when it is freezing cold, but the man was stubborn and traveled the Yukon alone with a dog to get to his camp.

The dog in the story shows the pure instinct. The dog didn’t need any warm clothing, matches, maps, or thermometers. In the story, the man never treated the dog emotionally and only used his dog as tool. The dog did what it was supposed to do to survive with his natural instincts.

OPINIONS WITH EVIDENCE:

The story shows the difference between will, individuality, and instinct. Even though the old man warned the main chararcter to not travel alone, the man in the story chose to travel the Yukon. As a consequence, the man had a really hard time surviving alone with the limited materials, and dies later on in the story. This shows the responsibility of a choice that he made.

However,the dog was totally different. The dog acted based on instinct. When he got his paw wet, it instinctively bit the ice that formed between his toes, which helped it to take the ice off from its toes. Also when the man is dead, the dog went to the other camp instinctively to survive. This shows that the instinct can keep you safe, but it would not keep any friendship.

QUOTES FROM THE STORY:

"There was not sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pull over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was dive to the absence of sun."

-These two sentences show the fact of Alaska. They describe the polar night youthfully. I realized I was being swept along on this vivid journey.

"He knew that at fifty degrees below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air."

-I was surprised of the writer's power of expression. It shows that it is killing cold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. He became a famous writer of his age when he wrote Call of the Wild, The White Fang and many other famous stories. Between 1900 and 1916, he completed more than fifty fiction and non-fiction books, hundreds of short stories, and millions of articles.

Although he did not receive an award in his time, Jack London became one of the most well-known authors of his time, and his amazing works are still being published and read all over the world today.

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