To Build a Fire | Overview

"To Build a Fire," published as a short story in Lost Face in 1910, tells of a man and a dog in the Klondike. The two are traveling on foot from one place to another in weather that is seventy-five degrees below zero. London examines the difference between man and animal in dealing with nature. The man learns that human technology is not as useful as the dog's intuitive, ancestral understanding of how to stay alive in very cold weather. The story is a tragic reminder of mankind's frailty in facing nature unaided by technology.

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