To Build a Fire
by Jack London

For much of the century before Jack London started writing, Americans often wrote about how a return to nature would allow us to reach some sort of transcendent state or bliss (we're looking at you, Henry David Thoreau). London reacted to this tendency through a style known today as "literary naturalism," which depicted nature as a brutal force that was completely indifferent to humanity's existence or accomplishments. That's not to say that nature's an evil force in London's eyes. It just doesn't care one way or the other if humans are happy, or self-actualized, or, well alive. In "To Build a Fire," London plays this note constantly in his descriptions of the vast, brutal quality of the Yukon landscape, and the indifferent survivalism of the dog, who also couldn't care less if the guy lives or dies, as long as he can get his four paws near a fire.

Questions About Man and the Natural World

1. When Jack London represents nature as something that is cold and indifferent to human happiness or survival, does this mean that he hates nature?
2. Does the man have any say in his fate, or are all his efforts useless in the face of nature's brute power?
3. Do you ever get the sense that nature is actively trying to kill the man?
4. Does it mean anything that the dog howls at the man's dying, or is it just an instinctual response to the smell of death?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate. In "To Build a Fire," Jack London shows us that nature's true value lies in the fact that it does not care about humanity.

Whether he has imagination or not, the man's thoughts mean nothing in the face of the vast and cold Yukon.

• An unnamed man is making his way through the white snow of Alaska. And it's really, really cold out.
• He's not concerned about the cold or the lack of sunlight, but not because he's used to it. He's actually a chechaquo, or "newcomer" to the Yukon.
• The narrator then tells us that the man's "trouble" is that "he is without imagination" (3).
• See, the guy knows the day is cold, but doesn't really spend any time wondering about how his frail human body will stand up to it. He doesn't seem to grasp how tiny and ant-like he is in this giant abyss of arctic snow.
• Spitting into the air, the man hears a sharp crackle and realizes that his saliva has frozen before hitting the snow. This means that it must be colder than fifty degrees below zero.
• The narrator tells us that the man is heading for a mining camp on Henderson Creek, where a bunch of his buddies are waiting for him with a nice fire and some tasty bacon.
• Traveling alongside the man is a native husky, which is closer to a wolf than your average dog. The husky isn't all that happy about traveling in such chilly weather, but it stays on the man's heels, hoping that the man will soon stop to make a nice cozy fire.
• There are nine hours of hiking ahead of the man, so we readers get the sense that he's a pretty tough dude, even if he doesn't know all that much about the Klondike.
• When he finally reaches Henderson Creek, the man starts walking along the ice. The creek is frozen to the bottom, but there are some underground hot springs that make little pockets of water in the ice, and it's very dangerous to get your feet wet when it's so cold out. Did we mention that it's really, really cold?
• Always the gentleman, the man decides to send the dog ahead of him.
• As expected, the dog breaks through the ice and gets it legs wet. The man helps get the ice off the animal's feet, and is surprised by how quickly his fingers go numb when he takes them out of his mittens.
• After he stops to build a fire (Title!), the man whips out his half-frozen biscuits and chows down.
• When he gets up, the dog is reluctant to leave the fire, for obvious reasons.
• After walking for a while longer, the man breaks through the ice himself and has to stop and build a fire all over again to dry his boots and warm his feet.
• As he builds a new fire, he thinks about an old man from Sulphur Creek who told him that folks should never travel alone in the Yukon when it's colder than fifty degrees below zero.
• But he thinks the old-timer is a little too "womanish" and gives himself a big pat on the back for being a "real" man. Of course when he tries to build his next fire, he can barely grip a twig with his fingers. Yeah, super manly.
• The man gets another fire going; but he's made a mistake by building it under a spruce tree.
• When he keeps pulling twigs off the tree, he shakes the thing so that a bunch of snow falls off its branches and buries his fire. He almost freaks out at his bad luck, but stays calm and starts to build another fire.
• The man has more trouble this time around because his fingers are so numb he can't pull a single match away from his pack of seventy. He tears one out with his teeth, but when he tries to hold the lit match to a piece of birch bark, the smoke goes up his nose and almost makes him cough up a lung.
• For his next attempt, he lights all of his matches at once and just holds them to the kindling by using his hands as stumps.
• The fire kindles, but when the man tries to load some more fuel onto it, he breaks up the fire with his clumsy hands and scatters the pieces in all directions. They all go up in smoke, and now the man knows he's in really big trouble.
• He starts to wonder if the old-timer from Sulphur Creek might have been right about this never-travel-alone business.
• When it seems like he's out of options, the man gets a crazy idea and starts to look at his dog as if it were a giant mitten. He thinks that if he can kill the dog, he can plunge his hands into its body and warm them until the feeling comes back.
• Next thing you know, he tackles the dog, only to realize that there's no way he can kill the animal. He can't use his hands to grab a knife or strangle the thing, so he gives up and the insulted dog runs forty feet away and stops there to watch the man.
• The man realizes that there's a pretty good chance he's going to die, so he starts running as fast as he can in the direction of the mining camp.
• He feels his body heat up at first and grows optimistic. But then he runs out of gas and realizes that he'll never make it. He feels ashamed for running around like some shmuck, so he decides to meet death with dignity.
• Lying down in the snow, the man drifts off into sleep.
• As he dies, he has a vision of himself with his crowd of buddies discovering his own body the next day. Then he thinks of the old timer who warned him against traveling alone, and admits that he was world-class idiot to do so.
• The man dies.
• The dog doesn't know what's going on at first, but after it catches the smell of death, it howls for a while and then trots off toward the camp, where it knows it can get food and have a nice fire. And bacon.