To Build a Fire 1908

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To Build a Fire (1908)

• Jack London

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Jack London (1876-1916)

• Prolific writer of The Call of the Wild (1903),
  The Sea-Wolf (1904), and 18 other novels, 200
  stories, over 400 nonfiction works
• First American writer to become millionaire from
  being an author
• Born San Francisco, father abandoned family
• Supported himself working from age 13, walked
  across U.S. as labor protestor
• 1893 experience at sea led to his first
  publication, Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of
  Japan

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Jack London (1876-1916)

• Attended UC-Berkeley for one semester in 1896
• Traveled in Yukon in winter 1897
• Involved in socialist movement as a lecturer and
  politician ran twice for mayor of Oakland as
  socialist
• Embraced both the socialism of Karl Marx and the
  superman ideal of Nietzscheideas expressed in
  his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909)

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Jack London (1876-1916)

• Crossed the Pacific in small boat (1907-09)
  helped popularize Hawaii as tourist destination
• Married twice his second wife Charmian was a
  New Woman who accompanied him in his travels,
  inspired some female characters
• Ranch at Glen Ellen, California

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Nature vs. Civilization

• To Build a Fire is a classic study of this
  theme, through the contrast it sets up between
  man and dog in a fierce environment
• First published as a boys story (2,700 words) in
  The Youths Companion, 1902 the expanded version
  (7,235 words) appeared in The Century Magazine in
  1908

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Alaska and Yukon Territory
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The Man

• Opening paragraphs (1-4) what the man notices
• His Watch (control of time) lunch at 1230 p.m.,
  arrival to boys at Henderson Creek forks camp
  at 6 p.m.
• No sun intangible pall over the face of things
• dark hair-line trail
• cold

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Man vs. Narrator (1)

• 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 (3)
• keenly observant (11)
• No impression mysterious trail, sun, cold no
  sense of mystery, strangeness and weirdness
• A newcomer in the land first winter

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Man vs. Narrator (2)

• Mans perception of cold
• Fifty degrees below zero was to him just
  precisely fifty degrees below zero (3)
• the temperature did not matter (4)
• Ice from chewing tobacco he did not mind the
  appendage (7)
• What were frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that
  was all (10)
• It certainly was cold It was cold (14)

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Man vs. Narrator (3)

• Narrators perception of cold
• man's frailty in general, able only to live
  within certain narrow limits of heat and cold
  (3)
• The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of
  the planet, and he, being on that unprotected
  tip, received the full force of the blow (19)

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Man vs. Dog (1)

• Not introduced until 6. Why?
• Wolf dog
• Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told
  to the man by the mans judgment (6)
• Instinct points to reality In reality, it was
  not merely colder than fifty below zero it was
  colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It
  was seventy-five below zero (107 degrees below
  freezing)
• Its ancestry knew cold, mans didnt (15)

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The old-timer on Sulphur Creek

• Represents experience
• Also, the ability of humans to pass on experience
• Problem mans lack of imagination means that old
  timers advice makes no impression on him (see
  20)

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Man vs. Dog (2)

• Wants man to build fire (6)
• Dog is mans toil-slave (15)
• no keen intimacy between the dog and the man
• So the dog made no effort to communicate its
  apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in
  the welfare of the man

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Man vs. Dog (3)

• Paragraph 12 a study of man-dog relationship
• Man uses dog to test ice dog gets wet
• Dog obeys mysterious prompting that arose from
  the deep crypts of its being and bites off ice
• Man, using judgment, assists the dog

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Series of Accidents

• Breaks through ice (17)
• Builds fire under spruce tree
• Avalanche of snow snuffs out fire
• Tries to rebuild fire. Lights all the matches,
  burns flesh, lights bark
• Unsteady hands disrupt fire
• The fire provider had failed (29)

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Detachment from Body

• The man looked down at his hands in order to
  locate them, and found them hanging on the ends
  of his arms. It struck him as curious that one
  should have to use his eyes in order to find out
  where his hands were (32)
• It struck him as curious that he could run at
  all on feet so frozen that he could not feel them
  when they struck the earth and took the weight of
  his body. He seemed to himself to skim along
  above the surface, and to have no connection with
  the earth (34)

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Rise of Imagination

• wild idea (from tale about man killing steer)
  He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the
  warm body (30) steal the dogs natural
  advantage. His envy of dog (25)
• Somewhere he had once seen a winged Mercury, and
  he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when
  skimming over the earth (34)
• He pictured the boys finding his body next day.
  Suddenly he found himself with them, coming along
  the trail and looking for himself (37)

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Acceptance of Death

• Fear and panic (33)
• take it decently (36)
• Admission of mistake to old-timer of Sulphur
  Creek You were right, old hoss (38)
• the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had
  ever known (39)

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Conclusion (39)

• Dog moves on
• eager yearning for fire mastered it
• Senses death master has failed
• Delays
• Goes to to other food providers and
  fire-providers
• Nature (and imagination?) triumph
• the stars that leaped and danced and shone
  brightly in the cold sky