"To Build a Fire"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how London lavishes upon the setting the amount of detail usually reserved for a story's characters. It examines how the setting is used to thicken the plot and how it fits in with the rest of the 'characters' in the story.

From the Paper:

"In an existential sense, the protagonist in the Jack London's short story, "To Build A Fire," (London, 1956) makes a decision to find his friends by "six o'clock in the evening." He follows through on that decision. For the reader, this decision is absurd. The temperatures, near the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere, where the narrative occurs, are inhuman. Nobody should have been out in these temperatures, at least without a companion. That's what "the old timer at Sulfur Creek" has cautioned. But the man, "of his own free will," decides to venture out on this journey. This decision will lead to negative and dangerous consequences the journey is fraught with danger, even of death. The reader hopes (against fading hope) that the man will succeed in building the fire."

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