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| Jack London(1876-1916) |
To Build a Fire is one of the most famous short story by Jack London. He was born in Jan 12 1876, near third and Brannan streets in San Fransisco. He is well know for his short story "To Build a Fire" as well as he was an American author, journalist, and social activist.He experimented with many literary forms, from conventional love stories and dystopias to science fantasy. His noted journalism included war correspondence, boxing stories, and the life of Molokai lepers. London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel, The Iron Heel and his non-fiction exposé, The People of the Abyss. A committed socialist, he insisted against editorial pressures to write political essays and insert social criticism in his fiction. He was among the most influential figures of his day, who understood how to create a public persona and use the media to market his self-created image of poor-boy-turned-success. His struggles there inspired London's short story, "To Build a Fire", which many critics assess as his best.The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 with a different ending, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration of the growth of his literary ability. This story is considered a prime example of the naturalist movement and of a Man vs. Nature conflict. It is also considered to be a reflection of London's own life after his experiences in the Northwestern Yukon Territory.
The man "was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter." Jack London's startling, and even cold, observation of a man's foolish confidence in the face of nature's power forms the story "To Build a Fire." As the man and his animal companion take a less-traveled path to their Yukon camp, they step into a tale of wilderness survival and dire circumstances. There are only two main characters in "To Build a Fire," the man and his dog, although some count Nature as a third character. In the story, Nature is portrayed as the antagonist—the foe against which the man is pitted for survival. However, Nature does not act deliberately—it simply is, and it is the man's own folly which causes his death. Other characters in the story are "the old-timer", a man who tries to warn the main character of the dangers that lie ahead if he decides to continue with his travels, and "the boys", the men with whom the man is supposed to meet up in the end. London's stark, distanced portrayal is an excellent example of American literary naturalism.
Protagonist" refers to the central or the main character in the story. And as this short story does not have so many character in it, "the man" is the Protagonist of the story. He starts his journey from the main trail in Alaska, in very cold, Grey and unpleasant morning. His goal at the start of the story is to reach the camp to meet "the boys," presumably to prospect for gold.He is traveling alone with his dog, which was big native and husky to meet up with his friends. He thinks he is smarter and tougher than nature but he finds out the hard way he isn't. As "Antagonist" refers to the opposite character of a Protagonist, In this story It is some how should be the nature, which is coming up in his way. "He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This was imperative at that low temperature -- he knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry fire-wood -- sticks and twigs, principally, but also larger portions of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw down several large pieces on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a match to a small shred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket. This burned even more readily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs." In terms of conflict in the story, it is absolutely man against nature. If you make a time line of the events in the story, it is almost as if the man who is destined to die. I am also quite not sure if the Protagonist and The Antagonist is "the man" himself.
The main conflict of the story is "The Man VS The Nature". London describes how the extreme cold does not make the man meditate upon mortality. More pertinently, the man does not realize that building a fire under a spruce tree may be dangerous. In all his actions, the man exercises only intellectuality--he thinks about the temperature in terms of degrees Fahrenheit, for instance, a scientific indicator. He never uses instinct, which would inform him without thinking that certain actions are dangerous. The dog, conversely, instinctively understands the danger of the cold without knowing what a thermometer is. Ultimately, the man's lack of free will exonerates him from any deep responsibility for the accidents he has, which is why London writes that the second accident was his "own fault or, rather, his mistake." A "fault" implies full responsibility, whereas a "mistake" suggests an isolated incident out of one's control. Fire was the most important thing man had going for him in the wilderness. It is warmth, it is light and it means life. An inability to build a fire, especially in winter, meant certain death. The man failed to heed his dire circumstances. He did not respect the signs and rhythms of nature and was, in the end, unable to perform this life saving task (building a fire)."But all this -- the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all -- made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and 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 only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head." The other conflict is man vs. himself. He must dig deep within himself to stay above the harsh circumstances. He failed to heed nature’s gentle warnings until it was too late. The man thinks he can overcome the problems he encounters (wet feet...) until his situation spirals out of control and he freezes to death.
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| Building a fire! |
"To Build a Fire" is, among other things, a virtual instruction manual on how to build a fire. It details specifically how one goes about gathering twigs and grasses, assembling them, lighting them, and keeping the fire going. The story, like many naturalist works, is obsessed with processes. These processes can be viewed as causal links--each event causes the next one. Causality is another preoccupation of naturalism, which grounds itself in the philosophy of determinism.
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| The Dog |
The dog represents pure instinct, a trait necessary for survival in the harsh Yukon. Unlike the man, who requires the products of intellectual civilization--warm clothing, matches, maps, thermometers--the dog simply uses its own natural advantages--fur, a keen sense of smell. Perhaps more importantly, the dog has an instinctive understanding of the cold. It knows that such conditions are dangerous and unsuitable for traveling; when its feet get wet, it instinctively bites at the ice that forms between its toes. This sense of instinct preserves the dog as opposed to the man--it even knows instinctively when the man is attempting to kill it (to warm his hands in its carcass). Although the dog cannot create a fire for itself, or even hunt down food in the wild so well, its instinct keeps it alive and allows it to find the nearby camp of men--"the other food-providers and fire-providers."
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| Man Vs Nature |
Though the man is hardly an "intellectual," he exercises intellectual properties more than instinctive ones. He uses complicated tools (matches) to build a fire; he understand how cold it is through temperature readings; he identifies where he is (Henderson Creek, the Yukon) through language on a map. The dog, on the other hand, is pure instinct. It remains warm through its fur coat or by burrowing into the snow; it has an innate understanding of the cold and its dangers; it could not point out its location on a map, but it knows by scent where to find the nearby camp with men. In the Yukon, instinct is far superior to intellect. The man's intellect backfires on him. His ability to light the matches with his numb fingers suffers in the extreme cold, and both his fingers and the matches are examples of man's naturally selected advantage of intellect: man has fingers to operate tools, and his larger, more complex brain allows him to create such tools. The dog is much wiser, aware that the cold is too dangerous for them; it even knows when the man is trying to deceive it somehow (he wants to kill it and bury his hands in its warm carcass). Accordingly, only the dog survives, and though it may not be able to take care of itself fully, it instinctively knows to go to "the other food-providers and fire-providers" in the nearby camp.
While the man in the story is adept with physical processes, he cannot make associative mental leaps and project causal links in his mind. London tells us this from the start, describing how the extreme cold does not make him meditate in successively larger circles on man's mortality. He has also ignored advice about avoiding the cold, not thinking ahead to what might happen in such harsh conditions. This deficit hurts him most when he builds the fire under the spruce tree; he does not think ahead that he might capsize the tree's load of snow and snuff out the fire. Only by the end of the story, when he is near death, does he mentally process causal links, thinking about his own death and how others might come across his body. The ability to process these mental causal links is the only way one can be held responsible for his actions in naturalism. Since the man does not make these mental links, he is not fully responsible for the accidents that befall him!
Collection of Images :
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| Building a Fire |
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| Jack London with his Dog |
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"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog."-Jack London
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| Cover of the Book 1908 |
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"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet" -Jack London
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| Collections of Jack London |
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"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive" - Jack London
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| Inside of the Book |
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"One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself"- Jack London
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| Picture of him in his early 30's |
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Build_a_Fire
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/knowledge-or-instinct-jack-londons-build-fire#sect-thelesson
http://www.drcoghill.com/discussion.htm
http://favim.com/image/156907/
http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=to+build+a+fire&hl=en&prmd=imvnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=-S-rT_OjAoLe2AWxy6WmAg&sqi=2&ved=0CIYBELAE&biw=886&bih=409
http://archive.org/details/ca337_phe
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