To Build a Fire

There is no doubt in any reader’s mind that Jack London’s short story, “To Build a Fire,” is the poster child and definition of Naturalism itself. Its attention to detail, lack of a happy ending, and man versus nature conflict all assure this avowal’s truth.

"To Build a Fire" is a story about a man, one of the many who went up to Alaska as a part of the Klondike gold rush, who finds himself traveling against the advice of seasoned veterans in temperatures below negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit (London 609). He ends up freezing to death because his fingers go numb, making it so that he is unable to start a fire in order to keep himself warm (London 611). However, the dog he has with him, who thinks traveling in such weather to be suicidal, lives and continues on to the camp they were heading (London 614).

The conflict itself makes this piece Naturalist. Naturalists often featured such man versus nature conflicts in their writing, often with nature winning in order to prove one of their major points: that man means nothing to the giant universe that sustains him, and that the universe gains nor loses anything in disposing of him. There is even a line within the story that makes this very clear.

“It did not lead him to meditate on his frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe” (London 604).

The protagonists of Naturalist writings also shared similar characteristics with the protagonist of “To Build a Fire.” They were often people stuck in desperate and dire situations, either the slums and streets of poverty in the cities, or people caught in the most horrible natural situations one could find oneself in, just like this gold rusher. For those characters stuck in nature’s clutches, they also exhibit an arrogance or egotistical quality, thinking themselves too important for the universe to simply snuff out.

This is also shown in the gold rusher in the line, “He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances” (London 604). It asserts that while he is knowledgeable, he is still stupid enough to get himself caught in the upcoming situation. This, combined with the previously mentioned quote about man’s place in the universe, provides foreshadowing for the end result of the short story, which is the gold rusher’s death in the freezing mountains due to his own feelings of self assurance and overconfidence.

The final and potentially least significant Naturalist trait to be found in this short story is the fact that Jack London explains and describes some of the things in more detail than would entirely be necessary, such as on page 604 when the gold rusher calculates how long it will take him to get to camp, and what will be waiting for him there. While these do add to the story since later on he is delayed further and further from his original schedule, they also mark London as even more of a Naturalist because they believed that detail was also necessary in true Realism.

Works Cited

London, Jack. "To Build a Fire." GlencoeLiterature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 603-14. Print.