To Build a Fire, Jack London | Arnold Chapman (essay date 1970)
Arnold Chapman (essay date 1970)
SOURCE: “Between Fire and Ice: A Theme in Jack London and Horacio Quiroga,” in Symposium, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Spring, 1970, pp. 17–26.
[In the following essay, Chapman finds parallels between London's “To Build a Fire” and Horacio Quiroga's “La insolación.”]
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.
Robert Frost
When the strong nations assume that man's only true work is to break through frontiers, they also assume that the courage it takes is the only one that validates existence. Because nature seems to taunt us with our limitations, she must be beaten, and no one but a coward would accept without a struggle the physical restrictions of his planet. Action is the only right response, and we often must go into it alone. The “ultimate frontier” of space now promising an infinite conquest, Man the Conqueror is a role that as far as one can see will endure for...
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