To Build A Fire, By Jack London

Author Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a short story portraying a prime example of naturalistic writing and Darwin’s scientific belief regarding “survival of the fittest,” discovered during the naturalism era. “To Build a Fire” exemplifies naturalism by using nature as an antagonist and showing how characters, such as the man in the story, live a trapped life and are constantly dominated by the environment. In the story, the freezing cold weather acts as a trap toward the man who was trying to get home to his friends. The man tries to build a fire to keep himself from freezing to death, but out of foolishness and unfitness, he built his fire under a snow covered pine tree and “the snow fell without warning upon the man and the fire, and