illustration fo a man in winter clothes lying on the snow under a tree with a dog standing near him

To Build a Fire

by Jack London

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Significance of the Unnamed Protagonist in "To Build a Fire"

Summary:

The unnamed protagonist in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" underscores the insignificance of individuals against the vast, unforgiving forces of nature. By not giving the man a name, London emphasizes the universal vulnerability of humans in the face of natural elements, reflecting the naturalist themes of the story. This anonymity illustrates the man's lack of imagination and respect for nature, highlighting a cautionary tale about the dangers of human arrogance and the importance of respecting environmental forces.

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Why is the unnamed protagonist significant in "To Build a Fire"?

During the Alaskan Gold Rush thousands of mostly nameless men sought their fortune in a harsh environment and lost. This character is but one of many who died alone and probably undiscovered. By the time his body might be found, there would be no way to identify who he was. As the man got colder, his first sign of hypothermia would be loss of reasoning. He sat down to eat on a frozen surface. That would rob him of body heat. He forced the dog to go where the dog knew it was not safe. He sought shelter under the boughs of a tree holding snow. As his fire raised the temperature, the snow collapsed putting out the fire and his hope of survival. To go out alone in the winter wilderness is a big mistake; to go without proper preparation is fatal. The dog is a part of nature, and...

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as such, its instincts protect it. Man has no instincts and mistakenly thinks his intelligence makes him superior. Another fatal error was not carrying flint and steel for fire-making. Matches can get wet and be useless, but flint and steel, though harder to use, are usually far superior.

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I assume that Jack London deliberately made the main character of "To Build a Fire" anonymous to show just how insignificant the man was in the vast, brutal world of the Yukon. Since the man was travelling alone--and against the knowledgeable advice of others--there was little need to give him a name. It also allows the narration a bit of emotional distance from the man, for without a name, the reader is less susceptible to feel sympathy for his predicament. The other characters mentioned were also given no specific names--probably for the same reasons mentioned above. Remaining nameless also made his death seem all the more insignificant.

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The short story "To Build a Fire" has as its main theme Man vs. Nature.  In this story, the juxtaposition of the man with the dog points to the strength of animal instinct against the rationality of man.  So, the absence of a name for the character extends him from the particular to the general--Jack London's intent in this naturalistic story in which a human being is subject to natural forces beyond his control.

Against the advice of the "old-timer," the man, whose "trouble...was that he was without imagination," ventures out on a nine-hour trek across the Klondike.  With him trots a dog,

a big native husky, the proper wolf dog, gray-coated and without any visible or teperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf....Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment.

Clearly, the natural forces, ones that the man ignores, win out against the human who ignores an intuitive sense that he may have. 

As a naturalist, Jack London was among a group of writers who went beyond realism in an attempt to portray life exactly as it is. Naturalists were infuenced by Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection and suvival of the fittest which held that huan behavior is determined by heredity and environment.  Relying on new theories in sociology and psychology, the naturalists dissected human behavior with detachment and objectivity, like scientists dissecting laboratory specimens.  "To Build a Fire" is the recording of such an "experiment."  And, as such, there is no need to give the man a name, since he represents any man who behaves as he did, any man who does not understand that fur and instinct are necessary for survival in the Klondike in the winter.

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Why is the protagonist in "To Build a Fire" referred to as "the man" instead of a name?

A fiction writer typically gives characters names in order to enable the reader to tell them apart. Since there is no other human character in "To Build a Fire," Jack London had no need to give his protagonist a name. London must have had additional reasons for not providing him with a name. One reason could have been that he wanted to illustrate the insignificance of human beings in contrast to the grandeur and power of nature. The protagonist seems pathetically tiny and helpless in the vast frozen landscape, and his motivation seems pathetically simple. He just wants to stay alive, and he needs a fire to do so.

Other famous writers have created stories in which they did not assign names to their characters. Two that come to mind are Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway. In Crane's great story "The Open Boat" three characters are only referred to as the Captain, the Cook, and the Correspondent. According to the eNotes Study Guide for that story:

The oiler, Billie, is the only character in the story whose name is given. This fact has often been remarked upon by critics. He is also the only character in the open boat who does not survive the ordeal. He is the most physically able of the four characters and seems the most determined to survive. The strongest rower, the oiler also makes the strongest effort to swim ashore when the boat capsizes in the surf. Yet his efforts come to nothing—he drowns in the shallow water just off shore while the other characters are saved by what appears to be random chance.

In Ernest Hemingway's frequently anthologized story "Hills Like White Elephants," none of the three characters are given names.They are referred to as "the American," "the girl," and "the woman." Since the reader does not know these characters by name, it is almost as if the reader has not been introduced to them and has not been invited to participate in their story. The reader is deliberately kept at a distance and can only speculate about what is going on between the man and the girl based on what they say and do. Hemingway was noted for his so-called "iceberg theory." He tried to leave out everything that was not absolutely essential to the event he was dramatizing.

There is something very "modern" about this technique. We live in a world in which we see and hear many things that arouse our curiosity and even our sympathy but which we will never understand. Older writers felt a need, not only to introduce their characters, but to describe their backgrounds and personalities. Good examples are Chekhov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog" and "The Bet," as well as Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need."

In some of the motion pictures by directors like Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard, it is possible for the viewer to feel disoriented because the usual questions of who, what, where, why, and when are not answered. A good example is Ingmar Bergman's marvelous Through a Glass Darkly. The viewer is forced to use deduction and guesswork--but that is the modern condition. There are too many people in the world. Too much is happening all around us, and everything seems to be happening faster and faster.

To be truthful, we ourselves meet a lot of people and forget their names as soon as we have shaken their hands--if we ever caught their names in the first place. In Jack London's "To Build a Fire," if he had given his protagonist a name, such as Jack Carter, would we even remember it? And what difference would it make?

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Why is the protagonist in "To Build A Fire" called "the man" instead of a name?

Jack London doesn't give his protagonist a name because he wants to address his cautionary tale to human beings in general.

The man in question could be just about anyone, and what happens to him could happen to anyone who doesn't show respect for the environment. There are many people just like him who show breathtaking ignorance and arrogance in their interactions with nature. The man's attitude is all too common, even in this day and age, when the dangers of venturing out into harsh weather conditions are more widely understood than ever.

In "To Build a Fire," one could say that London is putting forward a kind of eco-fable, a story concerned to warn us of the dangers of disrespecting the natural world. That being the case, the man is a paradigm example of someone who shows the environment no respect—a man who thinks that he can somehow tame the snowy wilderness without taking heed of the warnings of people who know better.

Although not many people would precisely follow the hapless man's example, there can't be many of us who can say, hand on heart, that we haven't treated the environment with disrespect at some point in our lives. We may not end up the same way as the man in the story, but that's not the point. London wants us to think about the consequences of our interactions with the natural world and understand that they can all too often be negative, even if not necessarily fatal.

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Why is the man unnamed in "To Build a Fire"?

Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire" is a work of brutal, unrelenting naturalism, portraying the conflict of mankind against nature. The man is not given a name because he is not intended to be an individual in whom the reader is interested because of any personal characteristics or attributes. He is merely "the man" because he represents mankind in the abstract, not for any particular type of person.

London constantly stresses the representative nature of his protagonist. For instance, when informing the reader that the temperature is fifty degrees below zero, he adds that the man has failed to "consider his weaknesses as a creature affected by temperature." He has also failed to consider the general frailty of mankind, which is only able to survive "within narrow limits of heat and cold."

The reader is given little idea of the man's interior life. The author focuses principally on what the man does and what he observes. This laconic style of writing does not preclude human sympathy, but it does affect the nature of that sympathy. Because the man is an everyman figure, it is easy for the reader to imagine his position. The lack of internal description helps to achieve this effect, but it creates a generalized form of sympathy for physical suffering and desperation.

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Why is the main character called "the man" in "To Build a Fire"?

To a very real degree, Jack London's decision to refer to his protagonist as "the man" reflects this story's naturalist themes. "To Build a Fire" is a story about human fragility in the face of nature. In this, Jack London's unnamed protagonist can be any human being caught alone in the elements. In fact, one could say that this is the point of the story: that there is nothing unique about the man's fate, freezing to death in the frigid conditions.

London's story focuses on only two characters, a man and a dog, as they trek across the Yukon. In this, the story's driving conflict is man versus nature, rather than the interpersonal conflict of man versus man or even the internalized conflict of man versus self. This story is about the desperate struggle for survival, and, through his extensively detailed and rich descriptions of the Yukon, readers receive a powerful, visceral impression of the environment itself, with its extreme coldness and desolation. It is nature that emerges as the antagonist here, an overwhelming and implacable force, with human beings entirely at its mercy. The man fails to truly understand this (a reality that is reflected in his decision to brave the Yukon alone), and this leads to his death.

When viewed in these terms, referring to the man by name might actually detract from the story's driving themes. It would instill in the character a unique sense of individuality and personal identity within the world he inhabits. But you should remember that this story does not actually aim to focus so much on the experiences of one particular person facing the harsh conditions of the Yukon. Rather, it aims to embrace the entire human condition. For London, this story is meant to reflect the dangers and difficulties which anyone would face when trying to brave the Yukon's harsh conditions.

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