As he ventures further into his journey, the temperatures drop and the man becomes concerned with his wellbeing. The bone chilling temperatures make his hands, feet, and face so numb that he doesn't know if they are frozen or not. He attempts to warm himself up, but without avail, he decides to build a fire for warmth. His first couple of fires along his journey are successful until he breaks through a layer of ice and plunges into freezing water. He quickly escapes but realizes that he must take another break to build yet another fire.
London also presented Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest in his story. Darwin’s idea implies that those best adapted to particular conditions will succeed in the long run. In relation to “To Build A Fire,” London explains how the man wanders through Alaska, where it is 75 degrees below zero, and eventually fails to make it to his destination. The man back at home had warned him of the dangers of Alaska’s winter, but he had simply laughed it off and casually taken on the challenge. Soon after, though, he was aware of the fact that it was extremely cold and life threatening to travel on the trail at that time.
It does know the cold is dangerous, not to cross the ice for fear of wet, to bite at the ice that forms between its toes, and even knows not to get too close to the fire for fear of singeing itself. The events leading up to the eventual demise of the man, there is a big point in the story that the man fell through the ice and wet himself up to the knee. If he prepared himself in advance, might would have prevented the man’s downfall. The only help he received, was the advice of old man from Sulphur Creek. As the man tried to stop his hands from
The man just had to accept death after going through different stages before he can come to terms with it. He than becomes depressed and goes into panic, realizing he cannot fight anymore so he just lays back and lets death take him away. In build a fire the internal and external conflicts both get resolved by the main character. The resolution to the conflicts comes when when the man accepts his fate and sits down to die. He tries to survive so he gets up and begins to run only to collapse in exhaustion, and finally, as the dog watches faithfully nearby, numbness fills his freezing body.
Nature is very powerful and a strong theme in “to Build a Fire”. London talks throughout the story about the freezing temperatures, fire, and water. The conflict that is significant between the men is that the new comer was very foolish in his decision to travel in the weather that day. The old-timer at Sulphur Creek warns him about traveling in fifty below zero weather. He also tells him that if he is going to travel in the Klondike in weather like this that he needs a travelling partner.
Yossarian learns Snowden’s secret, “man [is] matter.” “The spirit gone, man is garbage” (440). Snowden, along with the soldier in white, symbolizes the many faceless soldiers who perish in war. Snowden does not feel glory or pride that he’s dying for his country, he only feels cold and scared in his last hours. And soon, he is only a bunch of matter, holding no identity or spirit. As Snowden dies, Yossarian privately decides that he does not want to simply be matter.
The "fire" in this text is a very important symbol of both hope and humanity. McCarthy presents the reader with a grim and relentless dystopian world which offers little hope or future for humanity. The remnants of the human species are forced into cannibalising each other merely to survive or scavenging for tins and other dried goods thanks to some kind of unspecified disaster that has overtaken the planet. As a result, the humans in the book are presented as shadows of their former selves, debased and animalistic in the way that they prey on each other and have lost any sense of moral code. It is only the father and the son in this text that offer some kind of hope for humanity, and it is this that is captured in the phrase "carrying the
Frankenstein Essay Murder, violence, and hatred have been the disastrous results of a social phenomenon that has occurred since the birth of humanity. The insider/outsider phenomenon is one that cannot be avoided for all humans are different and all humans have the right to express this. However, the majority has always persecuted the minority, the strong the weak, the “right” the “wrong”. Mary Shelley incorporates these situations within a chilling, yet depressingly realistic story, Frankenstein, in which a confused and lost man learns what it means to be an outsider. Humans have always feared the unknown, frightened by the eruption of a volcano or the trembling of the earth, and labeled these as the wrath of an angered God.
The canine considers his master nothing more than a provider of fire and one that has the “sound of whip-lashes in his voice” (London 131). The story documents the success that the man experiences during the beginning stages of his journey; however, after he falls through ice and into freezing cold water it becomes clear that an ominous fate awaits him. His attempt to build a fire is blotted out when snow that is suspended in a spruce tree suddenly falls directly on top of his fire. As a result of this failure the man freezes to death in the harsh cold of the Yukon. His furry companion, not knowing what to think of the lifeless human, follows his natural survival instincts and hurriedly heads to the nearest encampment to seek out warmth and food.
In “To Build a Fire” the narrator plans to travel through the dangerous Yukon to a distant mining camp to meet up with some of his companions. It is his first winter there and he is called a “chechaquo”, a newcomer to the extreme subzero temperatures. Although he is warned by the old man from Sulphur Creek not to go out alone in the freezing weather, he does so anyway but brings a dog along with him. London writes of the dog, “Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment” (#). The man is very observant but doesn’t make connections to what he should watch out for so the dog’s actions tell of danger.