Jack London — "To Build a Fire"

This writing by Jack London is definitely a realist work. It has large amount of detail written into it. It gives you the feeling of freezing to death, not very pleasant. The unnamed protagonist tries to fight nature, but he ends up dying. This is a characteristic of naturalism. Knowing what I do about Jack London, he writes in mostly this genre. This particular story takes place in what is now Yukon, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush. The protagonist is walking toward his stake, where his sons await him in the already built camp. He is a newcomer, and somewhat cocky at that. This is the attitude that pits him against nature, which is a common theme in all literature, but especially in the naturalism subset of literature. He knows that all he has to do is get to camp, and he'll be fine. Although he is a tenderfoot, he knows his stuff; he's not a novice. As he's walking along a creek that will take him to his camp, disaster strikes. He, up until now, had been careful enough to avoid the water that lay unfrozen, despite the negative seventy-five degree weather. But this patch lay well enough hidden to escape detection. He was only wet up to his knees, but in weather that cold that will kill very quickly. He stays calm, and successfully builds a fire, despite his growing numbness in his hands and feet. But once again disaster strikes when the built-up snow on a tree that he stupidly built his fire beneath falls on his infant fire, totally destroying it. He attempts to build a second, knowing that if he fails he will probably die. But because of his total numbness, he is unable to. Try as he might, he just can't do it. He remembers stories of men slaughtering their animals, and using their bodies for warmth. He even tries to kill his companion, a dog, but once again his numbness stays his hands from killing his dog. He tries to suppress the thought, but he begins to doubt himself, and he begins to think that he may not make it. But he isn't beaten yet, his stubbornness keeps him going, at least for a little longer . He runs for an unknown amount of time, trying to become warm, trying to get to camp, but ultimately he fails, and falls down into the snow. He finally accepts that he's going to die. That nature beat him. That he should have listened to the advise of the seasoned expert that advised him to not travel alone when it was colder than negative-fifty degrees. It ends like many naturalist works do, with man losing to nature. This story was written in the early 1900's, several years after the Klondike Gold Rush had started. This drew many unprepared miners to the north. This writing is fictional, but it could have easily been the story of one or many of the gold-hungry prospectors that flooded the Yukon valley in hope of striking big. This was the second large gold rush in America, and the one that had occurred fifty years earlier had left America hungry for more.


Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., and Douglas Fisher. "Regionalism and Realism." Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009. 603-15. Print.