Sulphur Creek, the old-timer, tells the man that the winter of Klondike cannot be experienced alone due to the extreme cold weather, but the man continues in his journey without listening to Creek. Sulphur Creek affirmed that the man should travel with some company to Klondike because he would not survive alone due to the necessities that appear while at least fifty degrees below zero. The only company that the man has in his adventure is a husky, a dog that is used to cold weather and can face it. The problem is that the man does not accept the dog’s instincts either and does not believe that the freezing cold is as dangerous as Sulphur Creek tells him. There is no evidence of the man’s knowledge of the Arctic, where Klondike is located. There might be a reason, unknown for the readers, that influences the man to go there alone (Pizer 220). The man faces difficulties in his journey and dies after his hands and feet are frozen and he cannot build a fire to warm himself anymore.
The choice of not following Sulphur Creek’s advice and going alone to Klondike is considered a representation of the man’s ignorance. The narrator affirms that the man has no understanding of the danger of a cold snap in the Arctic, “But all this – the mysterious, far-reaching hair line trail, the abscessed of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of this all – made no impression on the man” (London 1813). This sentence illustrates that the inhospitable environment does not scare the man. Also, he repeats several times that the weather was too cold for the man to continue his adventure encouraging the man to stop his adventure, “In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below” (London 1814). The man insists on not listening to any advice he is given. He insists on going to face the cold by himself without any instructions (Pizer 221). The question that exists in all reader’s mind is why the man would do such adventure if he had no experience to get out alive. Therefore, there is a belief that the man went to his journey alone because of an unknown purpose.
The dog in this short story is a meaningful character because it knows better than the man when is time to stop traveling, “Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment” (London 1814). Due to the dog’s instincts, it knows better than the man how to survive there. However, it also knows that it was cold enough to kill the man. Another meaningful figure in the story is Sulphur Creek. The main advice that Sulphur Creek gave to the man was that, “after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner,” but the man never followed it (London 1820). After surviving the first freezing moment, when the man stops to build a fire and his blood circulation went down, he reinforces his dedication to fulfilling his destiny without needing anyone else with him (Pizer 221). The narrator states his point of view that the man was extremely determined to survive through his journey after the first cold snap in his body, “Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself” (London 1818). However, there is no evidence that the narrator well accepted and congratulated the man’s choice rather than disagreed with the character’s choices (Hilfer 285).
The biggest paradox in London’s “To Build a Fire” is the blame that everyone ends up putting on the man rather than analyzing his real conditions and thoughts before his journey began. It is unknown to the reader what happened before the man decided to go into the Arctic; however, there are possibilities that he chose not to bring some company nor listen to other due to some specific reason (Mitchell 86). Even though he knew he had many chances to die in the freezing weather, it could still have been the best option for his life at this time period. According to the philosopher Thomas Nagel, the narrator and most readers end up blaming the man for his actions pretending that he would not die if he had made different choices. This is called the “moral luck,” which people state that the man’s death was his fault after they knew his consequences, “consequences powerfully alter our understanding of prior action” (Mitchell 85). Though it is unknown if the man would survive if he had chosen to go into the Klondike with some company or had already had any seventy degrees below zero experience.
In London’s smaller version of “To Build a Fire,” the story had exactly opposite ending. The man, who in that case was named Tom Vincent, survived through his adventure in the late Antarctic winter (Mitchell 84). Considering that the man was in the same conditions in both versions, there is no authority to say that the man’s choice in the longer version was totally wrong and that through that he would fail in his journey anyways. Only a few people would think that building a fire in the open would be safer than under a tree. Therefore, it is not acceptable to point out that the man was stupid and ignorant. The narrator is the most persuaded one in the story because he makes obvious the man’s consequences rather than exposing his perseverance and determinism. He emphasizes all the happenings in the story with his hopeless point of view. Even before the man failed in his adventure, the narrator transmits to the readers that the man could not be safe there because he did not have enough knowledge for it anyway (Mitchell 86-88).
An interesting point of this story is London’s use of repetitions. A strong repetition in “To Build a Fire” is located in the last sentence of the short story which the dog is going to search for a new owner after the man’s death: “Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers” (London 1823). In this sentence, the repetition of the letters “t” and then “f-p” form a pattern in the sentence which gives the sense of a structured ending (Mitchell 77). Throughout the entire story, London writes identical words, phrases, and sounds. It makes the story slow because most phrases are repetitively related to the one before and the story does not progress (Mitchell 79). Most of London’s short story is written in the simple past tense and the sentences can usually stand alone. The simplistic way that London writes in “To Build a Fire” catches people’s attention: his story happens in one day, his main character is unnamed, there are three tries to build a fire, and the unsuccessful construction of a fire leads his main character to death. In other words, although there are not any significant events in this plot and each action is repeated more than once, people keep reading this story because it is still engaging and interesting (Mitchell 78).
The event’s repetition in “To Build a Fire” results in an environment that seems to be resistant to the man’s intentions and actions (Mitchell 80). On the other hand, whenever the man is safe and survived from a cold snap, the repetitions give a sense of calm. For example, when the word “flame” appears in the sentence rather than only the word “snow,” it gives the calm understanding, “This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt […] He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knew there must be no failure” (London 1817). By the time he knew he was safe, the man relaxed and his determination came back again, which was characterized by unfailing regardless of the power of nature: “knowledge of the past can help mediate the present and in turn directly shape the future” (Mitchell 81). Even though the man suffered a lot throughout his adventure in the winter in Alaska, he realized his mistakes a little bit before his death and at this point he could not do anything in order to keep himself alive. In spite the fact that some of the repetitions reinforce the idea of the man not having control over the situations he experienced in the same way that people do not have control over their destiny, the man could have survived through his adventure only by having more experience of living in that inhospitable conditions.
If taking into consideration that the man have had actual purpose when going into the Arctic rather than lack of knowledge, there is a lot more to focus on and study about London’s writing. The long paragraphs which explain the construction of the fire are slow to read because London expects readers to believe that the man would have success and survive. In that case, readers would not blame the man’s choice of building a fire wherever he decided to. After readers discover that the man’s fire was a failure, reader’s thoughts are moved by the “moral luck” automatically; if the man had followed Sulphur Creek’s advice, he would have a different ending. Although it is extremely important to listen to others and follow their advice, there were still chances that the man could be kept alive in the Arctic without company, as London supposed in the first version of “To Build a Fire.” Even in the second published version, the man probably knew he was going to face difficulties, but he still wanted to go into his adventure. Also, there may be a meaningful purpose that forced the man to go into the Arctic alone (Mitchell 86).
Many readers will agree that the man’s death was a consequence of his own ignorant actions (Hilfer 286). They believe that the man killed himself through the failure of his self-determinism and high confidence and because of his lack of knowledge and experience, “If through ignorance, inexperience, false self-confidence, and the ignoring of what others have learned and told us (all weakness shared by man) we challenge these conditions, we are apt to be destroyed by them” (Pizer 226). However, there may be a hidden reason about why the man went to cross the Arctic. It is not right to blame the man, like the narrator does throughout the story, since no one knows what happened in his life before he started his adventure. Although the man dies in London’s second version, in the first version the man survived at the end even though he was facing the same difficulties in the same environment. Thus, the main tension and excitement in “To Build a Fire” is through the readers multiple points of views. Some will think that the man was unlucky and his wrong decisions took him to fail his journey, and some will state that the man’s death was his own fault because he did not listen to Sulphur Creek and will regard the idea of the man going alone to cross the Arctic on purpose.
Works Cited
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Hilfer, Anthony Channell. "Blowback." Texas Studies In Literature & Language 54.2 (2012):
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"Jack London's Klondike Adventure." Jack London's Klondike Adventure. N.p., n.d. Web. 19
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London, Jack. “To Build a Fire.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym.
New York: W. W. Norton &, 2007. 1812-1823. Print.
Mitchell, Lee Clark. "'Keeping His Head': Repetition And Responsibility In London's 'To
Build A Fire.'." Journal Of Modern Literature 13.1 (1986): 76. Academic Search
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Pizer, Donald. "Jack London's "To Build A Fire": How Not To Read Naturalist Fiction."
Philosophy & Literature 34.1 (2010): 218-227. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25
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