Ralph is forced to concede, but he insists on making a signal fire so when his father comes to rescue them on a ship, the men on board will see the smoke and know where to find…
“To Build a Fire” takes place in the Yukon Wilderness. A gold discovery in 1897 led many to brave the Yukon Wilderness (Murdrock). “Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers set off for the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the trip” (Murdrock). The Yukon was a very cold and dangerous place with average temperatures around negative twenty degrees with lows reaching far passed negative fifty degrees (Murdrock). With only thirty percent of gold seekers completing the trip with even less claiming the riches they were seeking.…
In the short story, “How to Build A Fire,” and the short dialogue titled, “ Survival is the Ultimate Goal in World’s Toughest Sled Dog Race,” there are many differences while at the same time there are many similarities. To begin the two have many similarities. One is that they both are in the same general parts of Alaska. In the article about the dog races it says, “Crossing to Dawson City-the old Klondike gold rush town that marks the Quest’s halfway point.” This is where the short story’s, “How to Build A Fire,” setting took place. This means that the articles both take place in the same spots of Alaska in the cold winters. In the same articles (story) there are even more similarities. Another one is that, in both of the articles/stories one of the characters in…
In the book “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon the main character is Christopher Boone who is a 15 year old boy. His mother ran away with his neighbor Mr. Shears and then Christopher’s dad and Mrs. Shears try out a romance too. However Mrs. Shears backs out though, so Christopher’s father kills her dog with a pitch fork. Then being the animal lover and curious person he is, wants to investigate the death of the dog. Christopher’s investigation was provoked by Mr. and Mrs. Shears; additionally, each of these characters enhanced Christopher’s life in different ways.…
Beginning the plot, fire always ascribed itself an image of both physical assistance and mental aid. The blazing campfires the dramatic duo of the boy and his father create offer warmth and an atmosphere of a sanguine tone, and is essentially what endorses the positivity in the characters. Almost the entirety of the plot affords optimistic association to fire, as in order to persevere and endure, the duo…
1. When the man comes to severe difficulty after falling in the water and struggling to light a fire, he thinks back repeatedly to the old man at Sulphur Creek.…
Trying to reach the camp by himself with no one else, but a dog, the “Man” completely ignores the temperature and believes that it “did not matter” other than an obstacle to get around. He believes that if a person keeps moving, the temperature doesn’t matter and it won’t effect the journey other than a hinderance of moving. The “Man” continues on his journey while his fingers and toes are already numb, leaving the rest of the body to quickly follow. After falling through ice into water, the “Man” is quick to build a fire and when he succeeded, the snow-filled tree dropped snow on the top of it. He assessed the situation and realized that “he should not have built the fire under the pine tree”. Pine trees are a weak type of tree and their limbs will bounce if pressure is applied, the “Man” ignored the obvious hazard and built the fire under the tree, finishing the fire and himself off. By ignoring the temperature and losing the fire,allows fate to complete with his death and make him unsuccessful toward his want of reaching the camp.…
In the novel, A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher Boone succeeds in his endeavor of escaping the restraining oppression of dependency by finding solace in physical confinement.…
The man eventually loses the ability to move/grip/hold anything, and therefore lost the ability to start a fire. Because of this, he dies.…
Deepak Chopra once said, “The masculine energy was about survival. The male was the hunter who risked his life and had to be in the fight-flight mode.” When pertaining to survival, the main character in “To Build a Fire” by Jack London failed to follow three main steps in Laurence Gonzales’ nonfiction trade book, “Deep Survival.” The main character failed to stay calm, to think, analyze, and plan, and to never give up during his trek through the pure, untrampled white snow.…
The protagonist did not think about his actions, analyze what he was about to do, or plan his way through the woods thoroughly (Gonzalez 96). One example of these shortcomings is when he left the first fire he made prematurely (London 83). The protagonist is so focused on moving on that he does not…
At 90 degrees below your body will completely shut down when exposed to the cold. The man has wet feet, his hands and feet don’t work anymore. He tries to build a fire but he can’t bend his fingers to get the twigs and fire starter where it needs to be. The man also makes a very fatal mistake, (Pages 7, 9) this mistake was probably made because of improper circulation of blood to the brain. This mistake cost him his life and once he realized it he accepted his fate. This mistake also impacted the dog because the dog was then a lone traveler. (Page 12)…
Nature can be a dreaded enemy and can drain life out of humans and animals that are not aware and cautious. In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, nature sets and controls the tone throughout and interacts with the man and his dog. In the story, a man and his dog are traveling through the Yukon, in Alaska, to meet the man’s friends in a cabin miles away. They encounter an enormous amount of adversity and pain while trying to reach his friends. The Yukon is one of the coldest places on Earth and the man and his dog have to travel for hours in the bitter cold. They discover the power and ruthlessness of nature head on in their journey. The man had an estimation of how cold it really is while he and his dog were walking, the temperature is, “Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man 's frailty in general, able to live within certain narrow limits of cold” (London). This quote shows that the man believes that he is stronger and more powerful than the cold.…
In the story, the man is traveling with a dog. The dog is somewhat a companion, but for the most part it only views the man as a fire and food provider. The only item the man brings with him is his lunch wrapped in a handkerchief. His ultimate goal is to reach a camp where “the boys“ are. At the beginning of the story, London describes the man as, “ without imagination.” and “quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not the significances.” (London 115) This leads the reader to believe that he thinks about the perils he will have to overcome in his journey to camp, but does not think about how they will come or what his actions will do to provoke them. For example, when the man built his first fire, he built it under a spruce tree. He knew it was easier to pull the twigs from the tree and put them in the fire if it was right underneath, but he did not clearly think of what he was doing. “Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree, an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster.”(London 120) The agitation eventually caused the snow piled up on the tree to collapse right on the fire underneath. The man seemed confident that he would not face too much danger. He did not think about the weakness of human beings compared to the strength of nature. Instead, he believe that all he needed in order to live was to “keep his head”.(London 119)…
The short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a short story about a man traveling along the Yukon River in the bitter winter weather. While warned against traveling alone in the frigid cold, he travels out to meet his companions at a remote camp many miles away, with only his native Husky dog. Overcome by mother nature, he eventually dies along the way, leaving his dog to complete the journey alone. This story displays how the forces of nature can surprisingly overwhelm even the most confident of men.…