Jack London, through his short story, To Build a Fire, narrates the saga of a lone man who dares the extreme cold conditions of Klondike territory, and undertakes a journey through the wilderness to meet his friends at the base camp located nine miles away. As the story unfolds, the man’s journey progresses through an extremely hostile terrain where he confronts the savage treachery of nature. Calamities befall him one after another, and numbed by cold, he tries to build a fire but fails in all his attempts. Again, in the last bid to save his life, he runs hard but fumbles and falls. Finally, he realizes that he cannot withstand the fury of nature, slumps down beneath a tree, and honorably accepts his death. Through the tragedy portrayed in this story, London postulates the idea that man’s doom originates from his own folly as humans often live in an idealistic world without recognizing the realities, which becomes evident from various episodes in the story.
In the beginning, when the man plans his journey, the old-timer at Sulfur Creek warns him that he should not travel alone. The old man has a clear understanding of the terrain and the climate condition there, but the protagonist is only a ‘stranger’ to the area and he doesn’t really appreciate the implications of the journey under weather conditions of fifty degrees below freezing point. This signifies the fact that the man is just cherishing an idea about the journey and he sees it as a glorified achievement to pursue it and reach his friends. On the other hand, the old-timer who knows the terrain well and understands in a realistic context what it means to travel alone in such a climate. London emphasizes this aspect of the lone man’s character when he writes, “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.” (London).
To further accentuate the man’s folly, the author contrasts his character against the animal and the readers get the full impact from the lines, “But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire.” (London). The writer thus stresses the fact that the animal, though inferior in intelligence, appreciates the savagery of nature by its instincts whereas the man fails to recognize it despite his gift of knowledge, which the animal lacks.
The man’s fallacy of not appreciating the realities again becomes evident in the fact that he decides to build the fire “under the spruce tree,” instead of building it “in the open.” (London). The tree has been carrying the “weight of snow on its boughs.” (London). The man, who is thoughtless, has been pulling twigs from the tree, to build his fire, and “Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree-an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster.” (London). Thus, the burning fire gets blotted out, exposing the man again to the fierceness of the winter. Had he remained apprehensive of the consequences of his action, he would have built the fire in the open. Thus, through this episode, London once again establishes the fact that it is human folly that ultimately brings disaster upon them.
Another factor of human folly that London highlights in the story is man’s selfishness and his lack of love and sympathy to other animals that have an equal right to live on the earth. The man takes the dog on the journey not because he treats the animal as a companion; instead he wants it to carry the burden. The author makes this point very conspicuous when he explains that “there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toiling slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man.” This strikes home a concept that if the man has been fair in his treatment of the animal, perhaps it would have alerted him of the dangers that are lurking in the wilderness. In yet another episode in the story, the author illustrates the cruel and selfish design of humans when he refers to the man entertaining thoughts about the dog’s belly and dipping his hands in its warm blood to remove the numbness in his hands. As the man makes the move, the dog senses his intentions by its instincts and backs away to safety. Thus, throughout the story a reader encounters well-illustrated examples of human folly which become the reason for their own doom.
Writers use several literary devices for putting their ideas across to the readers. As discussed in the foregoing paragraphs, London achieves his objective of implying that the errors and misjudgments humans make finally bring doom upon them, through various episodes in the story that clearly illustrate the lack of understanding of the realities by the man. On the other hand, the dog, though an inferior creature that is endowed with lesser faculties of intelligence and wisdom, fully realizes matters that are relevant to its existence, by sheer instincts that nature has blessed it with. Thus, by contrasting the main character of the story with a dog, London successfully strikes home the point that the human fallacy of underestimating the realities of life and living in idealistic pursuits often lands them in trouble.