Essay | To Build a Fire

Author Jack London wrote "To Build a Fire," the heart-wrenching story of a man's struggle to overcome the power of nature in the most extreme temperatures. Throughout his journey along the trail in the Yukon, he underestimates nature and overestimates himself. Almost immediately his fate is revealed when London writes, "But all this---the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all---made no impression on the man" (977).

The man is new to the area and he does not realize the danger of this journey. Despite the man's carelessness, the reader hopes his rescuers will come. However, at the story's end, he meets death; he lays frozen in the Yukon and his faithful husky has left. Even a first-time reader can recognize the more obvious clues...
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