To Build a Fire narrative location Yukon
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. There are two versions of this story. The first one was published in 1902, and the other was published in 1908. The story written in 1908 has become an often anthologized classic, while the 1902 story is less well known.
The 1908 version is about an unnamed male protagonist who ventures out in the subzero boreal forest of the Yukon Territory. He is followed by a native dog and is en route to visit his friends—ignoring warnings from an older man from Sulphur Creek about the dangers of hiking alone in extreme cold. The protagonist underestimates the harsh conditions and freezes to death after his fire is doused and he is unable to re-light it.
In the 1902 version, though the structure and storyline are similar, the weather is not as cold and horrendous, no dog follows the protagonist, the fire is not doused, and the man (named Tom Vincent in this version) suffers only from severe frostbite and survives to become a more melancholic but wiser person.
"To Build a Fire" is an oft-cited example of the naturalist movement that portrays the conflict of man versus nature. It also reflects London's personal experiences in the Yukon Territory.1908 version plot
The unnamed man, a chechaquo (newcomer to the Yukon), sets out to hike through the forests bordering the Yukon River on a winter day where the temperature has fallen to −75 °F (−59 °C). Having ignored warnings against traveling alone in such conditions, he is accompanied only by a large husky dog. The animal's instincts warn it about the dangers of the extreme cold, but the dog reluctantly follows the man. As they follow the course of a frozen creek, the man is careful to avoid patches of thin ice hidden by the snow. His goal is to reach a group of prospectors (referred to as "the boys") at their camp by six o'clock that evening.
At half-past noon, the man stops and builds a fire so he can warm up and eat his lunch. Shortly after resuming his hike, he accidentally breaks through the ice and soaks his feet and lower legs, forcing him to stop and build another fire so he can dry himself. Having chosen a spot under a tree for this fire, he pulls twigs from the brush pile around it to feed the flames; the vibrations of this action eventually cause a large amount of snow to tumble down from the branches overhead and extinguish the fire. The man quickly begins to lose sensation in his extremities and hurries to light another fire, now starting to understand the warnings about the life-threatening danger posed by the extreme cold. He lights the fire, igniting all of his matches and burning himself in the process due to the numbness in his hands. While trying to remove a piece of moss from the fire, he inadvertently pokes the burning twigs apart, extinguishing them.
With no way to start another fire, the man thinks of killing the dog and using its body heat to save himself, but his hands are so stiff that he can neither strangle the animal nor draw his knife to cut its throat. Finally, he tries to restore his circulation by running toward the camp, but stumbles and falls multiple times in the snow. The man feels the cold gradually freezing him to his core, and he ultimately falls asleep and dies of hypothermia. He imagines himself standing with "the boys" as they find his body. The dog leaves the body after dark to find food and shelter at the camp.Themes
Man versus nature is a major theme in the story. The protagonist decides to face the brutally cold temperatures of the Yukon Trail despite being warned by an older man. The short story depicts the protagonist's battle of life and death while highlighting the importance of the fire. Lee Mitchel, a familiar critique of London's work, commented on London's usage of naturalism in his plots. That the efforts of emphasizing the environment too much led, “In turn, everything that somehow contributes to those attempts is doubled and re-doubled, iterated and re-iterated, leaving nothing to occur only once” (Mitchell 78) throughout the story.
One theme illustrated in the story is the man's sense of judgment contrasted with the dog's animal instincts. Throughout the story, London hints that the dog has more knowledge of survival than the man; the judgment-versus-instinct theme is evident when the man builds the first fire. While the dog wants to stay by the fire to keep warm, the man is determined to keep moving. As the dog reluctantly follows the man across a frozen river, the dog is more cautious than the man.
The protagonist's desperation is evident throughout the majority of the story. It is noticeable soon after the man falls into a frozen-over river. To save himself he scrambles to build a fire, but is too busy worrying about his survival to notice the mistake of building a fire underneath a tree that has collected an enormous amount of snow. After the first fire is put out, his desperation becomes more defined as he seemingly will do anything to survive, including attempting to kill his dog for warmth and using all his matches at once in a final attempt to light a fire. His desperation for survival and his fear of death cause him to panic, leading to his final demise as he freezes to death at the end of the story.