"To Build a Fire" - Jack London

Jack London may be best known for "The Call of the Wild," but his short story, "To Build a Fire" is a masterpiece within itself. It is a story of a man and his dog who are traveling along the Yukon River to the site of a mining camp. It is what I presume to be in the dead of winter and it is dead cold. The man keeps thinking of how could it is and soon the man estimates it is seventy five degrees below zero. Yes, I would say that is quite cold. But he is traveling along the river and soon stumbles and falls in the water up to his knees. So he crawls out and begins to make a fire. He spends a good portion of time making this fire, but then he disrupts the tree where he is getting his wood from, and snow falls on top of the fire putting it out. He then has to make another fire, but he is already too cold and his coldness takes over him and he cannot control his hands to make the fire. So he thinks of killing his dog, but he realizes he cannot do that. He then begins running around trying to get the feeling back into his hands and feet, but to no avail. The man lies down in the snow and accepts his death thinking freezing to death is not all that bad. He then becomes drowsy and falls asleep. This sleep happens to be his last and he dies while he is sleeping. The dog waits by his master for a while but then leaves the man to the camp he know for his own survival.

"To Build a Fire" shares many details of realism. Realism is defined by Abby Werlock as, "the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past" (Werlock, "realism"). Jack London does his best to create this image of the man who dies because of his inability to create a fire. He uses realistic details and keep on referring to an "old-timer" from Sulphur Creek. This only adds to the realism of the story by creating a believable background to the story. Then he says of how cold this man was and it depicting this man's final moments of his life as they exist. It even tells of the thoughts running through this man's head as it is happening. This depiction of the man's life as it exists relates "To Build a Fire" to realism.

"To Build a Fire" would also fit under the literary subset of naturalism. Abby Werlock says "The central concerns of naturalism are the forces that shape and move humanity and our inability to control them" (Werlock, "naturalism"). This is what we see within this short story. We see a man traveling along a the Yukon River and he suddenly falls in to his knees. He then begins to build a fire but it soon gets put out begins he is disrupting the tree above the fire by taking off twigs. He then is too cold to build another fire and runs around trying to regain circulation, but to no avail. These things are all one can control. Yes, the man was taking precautions before he fell in, but they apparently just were not enough. Then he stupidly takes firewood from a tree full of snow right above the fire he is trying to build for his survival. It is these forces in nature the man faces that make the man use his survival skills. He is unable to do the correct procedures to keep himself alive, and he is therefore unable to control the force testing his life.

There is a lot of human nature within this story as well. "And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to camp and the boys; that is was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things" (London). This man is fighting himself for his own mind. He has to believe in his mind that he can survive this, and a lot of it is a frame of mind when you are faced with a situation like this. You have to be strong psychologically to make it through difficult "life on the ropes" situations. This is a major battle in the man's head he fights throughout the whole story.




London Jack. "To Build a Fire." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 603-614. Print.


Werlock, Abby H. P. "naturalism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 16, 2011.


Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 16, 2011.