To Build a Fire (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Griffith Chaney
- First Published: 1902
- Type of Plot: Naturalistic
- Time of Work: 1900
- Setting: The Yukon territory, some seventy miles south of Dawson
- Principal Characters: A tenderfoot
- Genres: Short fiction, Naturalistic literature
- Subjects: Traveling or travelers, Nature, Human race, Self-confidence, Youth, Survivalism, Adventure
- Locales: Yukon Territory, Canada
The Story
“To Build a Fire” is an adventure story of a man's futile attempt to travel across ten miles of Yukon wilderness in temperatures dropping to seventy-five degrees below zero. At ten o’clock in the morning, the unnamed protagonist plans to arrive by lunchtime at a camp where others are waiting. Unfortunately, unanticipated complications make this relatively short journey impossible. By nine o’clock that morning, there is no sun in the sky, and three feet of snow has fallen in this desolate Yukon area. Despite the gloomy, bitter, numbing cold, the man is not...
[The entire page is 2006 words long]

