Arctic Annihilation
When ignorance leads to a brutally brumal demise
Themes in a story are like stain glass windows. Different pieces collaborate to create a bigger picture.
Up close, crucial elements like setting and symbols surface. After analyzing the story as a whole, all of the elements cooperate to produce the theme. In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, a man is determined to meet up with his friends despite the fatally cold weather. Unfortunately, the man loses his battle against the brutally frigid temperature. Throughout the man’s futile attempt to make it to the next camp, Jack London intertwines different themes with the story’s plot.
One of the themes in “To Build a Fire” is that man cannot ignore the extremes of nature.
While the man fails to realize just how cold it was, even the dog knows that the temperature is dangerous. “The animal was depressed by the cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling” (London, 570). The story is told in third person omniscient point of view which allows the reader to follow the story as if it is on a movie screen.
This allows the reader to analyze the story and discover its themes. If the story had been told in first person, the reader would have only been able to see through the eyes of the man and may not have been fully informed about the frigid temperature. With third person omniscient, the reader knows about the brutal cold, how the dog feels about traveling in the weather, and how the man continuously fails to acknowledge the danger he’s traveled into. While the point of view the story is told in helps the reader discover the theme, the setting is a crucial part of the theme.
The extreme cold plays the antagonist in the story.
According to Jill Widdecombe, “the cold itself functions as an invisible antagonist in “To Build a Fire””. The word antagonist is a synonym to the word villain. A villain is usually pictured as a flamboyant, evil person. However, in this story, the antagonist is not a person at all. It is the frigid cold, the endless snow, and the freezing water.
“To Build a Fire” is set in the Yukon. It was the man’s first winter there. While he never experienced the harsh winter first hand, he is warned about the danger from an older man. Another theme in this story is that willful ignorance can lead to downfall. Jack London illustrates the man’s ignorance in the third paragraph of the story.
“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” ( 570).
The man consistently fails to acknowledge the consequences of being in such frigid weather.
After he manages to successfully start a fire, he is quick to believe that he has proven the old man wrong. “Well here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself” (London, 574). While enjoying his success, he fails to realize his mistake of being directly under the spruce tree.
This is not his only mistake throughout the story, but he follows a pattern. He decides to do something without thinking about the potential negative consequences and outcomes. Then he makes a mistake and refuses to acknowledge the impact the mistake has on his health. He does not realize that the frigid weather could ultimately kill him.
Both the old man and the dog act as symbols in the story. Older people tend to be wiser because they have more life experience. The older man warns the newcomer about the dangers of traveling alone in the extreme weather. The old man and his warning represent wisdom. The dog also knows that they should not be traveling in such weather. While the dog may not know how cold it is temperature-wise, its instincts tell him that it is dangerous. The dog represents instinct and intuition. The man ignores both of these and continues to travel, even as he begins to suffer from the consequences of being out in such glacial temperatures.
In “To Build a Fire”, a man takes a merciless, snowy journey to an unnecessary death.
He ignores the warnings of an experienced man and ultimately faces an extreme outcome. Jack London takes the reader on a frigid journey while illustrating the potential results of both ignoring the power of nature and being content with willful ignorance. The frigid setting not only acts as a subtle antagonist, but also enhances the themes in the story. The point of view allows the reader to explore every aspect of the story and help uncover the themes embedded within. The components of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” merge together to enrich the themes of the story.
This piece is an essay I penned for my English class during the fall semester. I don’t remember the grade I got on it, but any feedback is always welcome. Feel free to leave your thoughts below.I kept it mostly in MLA format, which is why you see the in-text citations. I also added my sources below. I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope you have an excellent day!
Sources:
London, Jack. “To Build a Fire”. The Bedford Introduction to Literature, edited by Michael Meyer, 11th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp.569–78.
Widdecombe, Jill. “An Overview of ‘To Build a Fire.’” Gale Online Encyclopedia. Gale, 2016. Literature Resource Center, Gale document number: H1420007983. Accessed 13 October 2017.
