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To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is one of Jack London's more famous short pieces, and has two versions; the first had a somewhat more optimistic ending in which the main character, an anonymous male...
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To Build a Fire
In a sense, this is a false dichotomy with respect to Jack London's story "To Build a Fire." While an external conflict is a struggle against something outside oneself and an internal conflict is a...
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To Build a Fire
In "To Build a Fire," the primary reason for the man's death is not the cold itself or the lack of a fire, although these are the most direct and empirical reasons. The real reason is his pride, in...
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To Build a Fire
The story "To Build a Fire" takes place on the Yukon trail. The first line of the story is "Day had dawned cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail." Even for the Yukon,...
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To Build a Fire
In this passage we see that nature is violent and indifferent to the fate of the man, the dog, or any creature that happens to be in its way. This is a common theme in Naturalism. One could argue...
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To Build a Fire
The unnamed protagonist of "To Build a Fire" is travelling alone, with only his dog as a companion, in order to meet back up with the other members of his party. We don't know exactly why he had...
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To Build a Fire
The exact number and types of archetypes are not always the same, but there are generally consistencies among the various lists. I linked to a list of character and situation archetypes from...
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To Build a Fire
Throughout the story, London compares the man's knowledge to the dog's instincts, and the dog's instincts seem to be superior. The man knows that it is cold. Unlike the dog, he can read a...
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To Build a Fire
From the first paragraph, the reader already notices that the main character does not follow what would be considered common sense. For instance, in the first line, after London establishes the...
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To Build a Fire
In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” important elements of setting include the location, time of day, weather, and the environment itself, which all combine to create an...
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To Build a Fire
Although we are told that the man traveling alone in the Yukon is not much of a thinker, he does recall the advice of the old man on Sulphur Creek six times during his journey. It is significant...
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To Build a Fire
Even though the main character of the story had been warned multiple times about the severe cold he was going to walk through, he refused to listen to any of their advice. One of the main...
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To Build a Fire
When the story opens, it is morning and the man and his dog are in the Yukon. The Yukon is the northwestern part of Canada and lies east of Alaska. London describes the sky as "cold and grey,...
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To Build a Fire
I am not sure what kind of quotations you need, but I have put some into categories below: Characteristics of the man: But all this—the distant trail, no sun in the sky, the great cold, and the...
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To Build a Fire
In "To Build A Fire," the main external conflict can be expressed as "man against nature" -- it is simply too cold (75 degrees below zero!) to travel alone. The internal conflict is the man's...
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To Build a Fire
There are some important differences between the 1902 version and the one published in 1908, which is the version most people know. In the earlier version, the man has a name, Tom Vincent, and we...
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To Build a Fire
Mood is the emotional response a reader has to a particular aspect of a work of art or literature. To begin with, the reader joins a man in hiking the Yukon Trail with the hopes of soon being...
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To Build a Fire
The dog, who is perfectly suited to its environment, reflects the role of heredity, instinct, and natural selection in the ability to survive. It functions as the creature who has adapted to...
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To Build a Fire
The man ignored the old-timer, because the man is stupid and overconfident. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather...
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To Build a Fire
There are a variety of reasons for this, most of them subtle, and not necessarily crucial to understanding the story or main character, but it's an informative piece of imagery nonetheless. First,...
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To Build a Fire
The first response to this question is that the man is meeting a group of other "boys" at the old camp on Henderson Creek, where he hoped for "the possibility of floating logs from the islands in...
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To Build a Fire
The climax, or point of highest emotional intensity, in "To Build a Fire" occurs after the man's first fire is extinguished and he is unable to start a second. In Jack London's story that...
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To Build a Fire
The man does not belong in this setting. He can only maintain his existence by the artificial means of building fires. The dog, on the other hand, does belong in this setting because it is not far...
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To Build a Fire
There is the anthropocentric assumption that humans are more intelligent than all other animals, including dogs. Therefore, the reader would perhaps assume that the man knows best and that the dog...
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To Build a Fire
In the final moments of the story, the dog realizes that the man is dead when he starts smelling the decay of the man’s body. The dog no longer needs the man because the man is unable to feed him...
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To Build a Fire
Think of it this way. Did the dog need his imagination in order to survive the frigid cold? The dog relied solely on his instincts and knowledge of nature to make it out alive. The man, however,...
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To Build a Fire
First person narratives always employ the words "I," "me," "mine," "my," etc. Edgar Allan Poe's famous story "The Cask of Amontillado" is a good example of first-person retrospective narration. "To...
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To Build a Fire
In what has been described by some readers as "the coldest story anyone could read," the most vivid moment may well be during the climax in which the man is freezing and makes his last desperate...
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To Build a Fire
I think the point of the story is that the man's death in the wilderness is pointless—no one is affected, in any significant way. Of course, there are not many characters in the story—other...
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To Build a Fire
Evidence that the man does indeed gain knowledge at the end of “To Build a Fire” can be seen in his last words: “You were right, old hoss; you were right.” The man is addressing “the...
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To Build a Fire
Without the dog, the unnamed protagonist would be all alone. That would force the author Jack London to remain inside the man's mind from beginning to end. This could become tedious. The dog offers...
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To Build a Fire
London uses dramatic irony to great effect in his story "To Build a Fire." In the story, a man is walking from one camp to the next through the Alaskan wilderness, accompanied only by a dog, in...
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To Build a Fire
In the short story, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, the newcomer heads out for his camp and ignores the advice of the old timers that it is too cold to travel alone. He is sure that he will be...
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To Build a Fire
Jack London's adventure story "To Build a Fire," set in the Yukon at the turn of the 20th century, is a perfect example of a "man vs. nature" conflict. The unnamed protagonist is hiking in the...
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To Build a Fire
The turning point in the story comes when the unnamed protagonist breaks through the ice and gets soaked up to his knees. He has to build a fire to dry out and keep from having his feet and lower...
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To Build a Fire
One of the similarities is that both stories end with a man's demise. In "To Build a Fire," the man is over-confident in his ability to survive in the harsh conditions of the Yukon. In "After...
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To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" takes its title from the main character's goal during the second half of the story. The anonymous man, a fortune-seeker and woodsman, is hiking across the frozen Yukon wilderness...
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To Build a Fire
The moral lesson in Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire" is that people should not think they are more powerful than nature. In addition, people should listen to others who have more...
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To Build a Fire
The natural setting of the brutal arctic conditions of the Klondike, conditions which are indifferent to the presence of a man, express Naturalism, a literary movement among novelists who viewed...
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To Build a Fire
Nature and the narrator of To Build a Fire have one thing in common--they are both unsympathetic and uncaring about the existence and mortality of the man in the story. To Build a Fire is...
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To Build a Fire
When the man sits down to eat his lunch, the major thing that strikes him is the astonishing swiftness with which numbness overtakes his fingers. He bangs them against his clothes in order to try...
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To Build a Fire
The first occasion occurred when the man tried to eat his sandwich. Unfortunately, his mouth was frozen shut and he regretted that he had not already made a fire. He then discovered that his...
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To Build a Fire
Jack London creates a mood of desolation and foreboding as he describes the setting in “To Build a Fire.” First, he describes the Yukon morning as being sunless with no “promise of sun.”...
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To Build a Fire
In the first part of the story the narrator emphasizes the cold temperature. The man is continually being surprised that it is so much colder than he expected. This seems ominous. He was...
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To Build a Fire
The ending of the story proves that the dog's instincts were superior to the man's reasoning. The man freezes to death in the snow, having made a complete debacle of his journey across the...
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To Build a Fire
Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” is one of my favorite naturalistic works. It is about a man attempting to traverse the Klondike region after diverging from the main trail. The...
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To Build a Fire
Authors have to make up names for characters mainly in order for their readers to be able to tell the characters apart. However, when there is only one character in a story the author may not feel...
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To Build a Fire
The greatest danger to the anonymous man in "To Build a Fire" is not precisely the terrible cold but the danger of getting wet. Jack London wrote from personal experience. His story is a good...
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To Build a Fire
I would like to offer another suggestion. What impresses me the most about this story, which I have read several times over the years, is the sophisticated way in which Jack London uses the...
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To Build a Fire
I don't believe that the dog has a name. It is always referred to as "the dog." Even when, towards the end, the man is trying to get it to come to him so that he can kill it and warm his hands...