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To Build A Fire - Significance - Online Term Paper

To Build A Fire - Significance

The significance of the words "dying and death" in Jack London's 1910 novel, "To Build a Fire" continuously expresses the man's dwindling warmth and bad luck in his journey along the Yukon trail to meet "the boys" at camp. London associates dying with the man's diminishing ability to stay warm in the frigid Alaskan climate. The main characters predicament slowly worsens one level at a time finally resulting in death. The narrator informs the reader "the man" lacks personal experience travelling in the Yukon terrain. The old-timer warned the man about the harsh realities of the Klondike. The confident main character thinks of the old-timer at Sulphur Creek as "womanish." Along the trail, ...

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built without fail." The man's mind begins to run wild with thoughts of insecurity and death when the second fire fails. He recollects the story of a man who kills a steer to stay warm and envisions himself killing his dog and crawling into the carcass to warm up so he can build a fire to save himself. London writes, "a certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him."
As the man slowly freezes, he realizes he is in serious trouble and can no longer make excuses for himself. Acknowledging he "would never get to the camp and would soon be stiff and dead," he tries to clear this morbid thought from his mind by running down the trail in a last ditch effort to pump blood through his extremities. The climax of the story describes "the man" picturing "his body completely frozen on the trail." He falls into the snow thinking, "he is bound to freeze anyway and freezing was not as bad as people thought. There were a lot worse ways to die." The man drowsed off into "the most ...

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To Build A Fire - Significance. (2006, January 9). Retrieved March 27, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/To-Build-A-Fire-Significance/39369

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 1/9/2006 09:56:11 PM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 576
Pages: 3

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