Literary Analysis of Jack London's "To Build A Fire"

            Jack London’s short story titled, “To Build A Fire” is one of the most symbolically brilliant stories that has contributed to the development of our American literature.  It is too easy to go on and on about the hidden teachings that Jack wanted his readers to learn from and ponder over.  So, get ready to read.

            Over all, the story is narrating the journey of an experienced explorer of the wild who has decided to take his need for adventure to the next level.  The hiker is said to be alone as he sets out on the trail tracing the Yukon River to meet up with “the boys,” many miles away with only a heavy coated dog at his side.  Even at the bare beginning of the story there is a hint of foreshadowing of the darkness that is to come when the storyteller mentions, “It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark.”  Directly following this statement, a glimpse of the demeanor of the hiker is shown when, “This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun.”  This does not seem like he is being at all ignorant to nature’s subtle signs, but this attitude towards his hostile surroundings becomes severely consequential soon enough. 

            The author further described the man to be “without imagination.”  He had received advice from an “old-timer,” native to this harsh weather who warned him about the dangers of hiking alone in such chilling weather.  The man told the hiker to never be outside alone when the temperature is 50 degrees below zero.  Later in the story the hiker mocks the old-timer when he says that old-timers around here are “quite womanish” for taking such unnecessary precautions.  The hiker throughout the story thinks to himself that it “definitely was cold,” hinting at the fact that consciously, he knew that his situation was a cause for concern, but time and time again he justified not worrying about the red flags and thought of “other things.”

            As the hiker begins to feel his face becoming numb, along with his fingers and toes, he does everything he can to reestablish circulation and continue on.  The narrator highlights the man’s ignorance for one of the first times in the story when he illustrates that the man regrets not having a nose strap to protect his face from the cold.  The small amount of concern that the man shows about this potentially life threatening issue is to think, “… it didn’t matter much, after all.  What were frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.”  Imbecile..

            The hiker had an “empty” mind while staying “keenly observant,” when he surveyed the snow in search of thin layers of ice or bubbling springs that could be hidden under a thin layer of snow.  He is so confident that he has total control over his safely that he follows up his careful observations by forcing the dog to walk on suspicious areas before him.  The dog hesitated to cross the patch of snow.  The dog’s strong “instinct” is brought up many times in their travels to depict a contrast between its seriousness and the hikers nonchalant attitude.  Not only was the dog spoken of as a instinctual creature, but it was given a mental voice at times, as in to say, “The dog was disappointed and yearned back towards the fire. This man did not know cold.”  The intuitive dog did not have the ability to blind itself through the mechanics of conscious thought, as the man could and preceded to do countless times.  It is statements like this that show just how much we as humans can lie to ourselves to suppress unwanted emotions such as the fear of the inevitable. 

            This type of clouding of the human senses is what ended up dunking the hiker into an unseen thin patch of ice “wet[ing] himself halfway to the knees.”  Though he understands that he is now in mortal danger, his immediate mental response to this accident is to “curse his luck aloud,” and then obsess over the fact that this little mishap would “delay him an hour.” 

Seriously, by this point, I stopped pitying and started doing some serious eye rolling. 

            After the pouty hiker gets himself together enough to try to make a fire to dry up his shoes, socks and feet, his ignorance causes his bad luck streak continue to snowball (pun intended).  His attempts at making a sustainable fire do nothing but “fail” again and again.  He remembers that the old-timer who he had mocked for being a girly-man earlier in the day, told him to never build a fire under a tree for the danger of the wind or snow falling onto the fire and put it out.  Only because I enjoyed the rhythmic nature of this man’s mistakes, I will spite him by saying, the old-timer told you so.  The wind, which the author tells had noticeably been absent for weeks, caused snow to fall from the tree right onto his wimpy fire and “blotted it out.”  Just before this dramatic situation occurred, when the hiker finally got the lifesaving fire burning, the narrator said, “He (the hiker) was safe.”  The goal for this short yet potent statement was for two very important reasons.  One, after the hiker fell into the water he expressed a good deal of dread and alarming thoughts that raised the blood pressure’s of the reader so, this phrase was meant to bring their bodily fluid balances back down into normal ranges, though only for a moment.  The second and more important reason for this sentiment was to put the reader’s mind’s at ease so that when the hiker fails to relight the essential fire, fails keep his extremities from losing feeling, and ultimately fails to keeping his wits about him and starts running around like a lunatic fleeing from his snowy grave, they would be on the brink of a figurative heart attack.  The hikers disillusions block him from seeing that nature will never play by the rules, even if he decides to. 

            At the closing of the story, after the hiker has resolved his quarrels with the “treacherous tree,” he developed a “new-found peace of mind” with the though to “sleep off to death,” and came out of his “panic”, he laid in the snow and decided to die.  In his last moments, he says, “ you were right, old hoss; you were right.”  Only when there were no more options left open to him for survival did he see that he had brought his own death upon him.  Even after this point is made, the narrator gives the stage back to the dog that is sitting, confused as to why the man is not producing a fire.  To the dog, the man was only useful for survival.  After the dog gets a whiff of “the scent of death” off of the man, he turns around to trot towards where he knew the “other food-providers and fire-providers” were staying.  The dog, as basic of a creature the man thinks of it, survives.

            It is chilling to think that as humans, we have the ability to mask certain situations or obvious clues of our fate with such skill that we could potentially find ourselves in a situation such as the hiker.  Though this is a dramatic demonstration with the “life or death” scenario, doesn’t it suck to kick yourself later when you end up late for work, in serious debt, or even paying a speeding ticket that you could have avoided? Or worse?