The Yukon Trail

In the adventure fiction, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Buck, the main protagonist of the novel, goes through one of the most miserable times of his life. He is captured by Perrault and François, as both see potential in Buck as a new lead dog. However, they don't plan to just use Buck as a lead dog, they plan to put him on a grueling quest to find the Klondike region of Canada. During many points the expedition, London does something not many people do with their characters, constantly…

In the post-apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, McCarthy outlines a gray desolate story about and man and his son travelling a road riddled with macabre obstacles to reach the Southern Coast. The man and the boy begin travelling because it will soon be winter, and winter will be especially inclement, the world is covered in ash, which creates a dark blanket over the Earth. For, before the birth of the boy a never identified catastrophe ravaged the earth with fire, leaving few…

send hidden messages to the reader about how one must be careful to not be too prideful or foolish and to rely on instinct for survival. The suspenseful story urges the reader to consider his or her own mortality by how he wrote about the dangerous Yukon and situations that could happen to anyone. The ironic ending of the dog surviving while the man perished emphasizes how one must rely on instinct, and how one must heed the advice from someone more…

On a snowy mountain top, two hikers found a body sticking out of a glacier, the Iceman. Some archaeologists say he died in battle and some say from hypothermia, but no one knows the real cause of his death. The Iceman was a mummy, whose body remained preserved for 5,000 years in a glacier in the Alps. When he was found, his items from the Stone Age were laid around him. They found unfinished arrows, backpack, a copper axe, hay stuffed shoes, a dagger, and a phannie pack like pouch on his waist.…

It is a cold night in March as walk through the Desert of Gobi. It is freezing, and my men need to rest for the night, lest they all die from exhaustion. I always thought deserts where supposed to be hot and warm! I thought all hot was lost until I noticed a large settlement in the distance. I tell my men to get up and that I have found our salvation! We then walk up to the city gates and are greeted by armed guards. The guards ask us what we are doing here. I tell them that we are travelers and…

the far corners of the world, from the frozen Yukon to the South Pacific, writing gripping tales of survival based on his experiences”(Vitale 1). London’s life long influences take part within his writings and are mainly about man vs. nature or man vs. man. In London’s early years he was very adventurous. He went to…

Would You Go Into the Storm? Does the helplessness of animals bring people guilt? Maybe even give them the need to help them? In the story, "What Happened During the Ice Storm" that is exactly how a few boys had felt. The author Jim Heynen displays the story how the boys went out in the freezing cold to help pheasants that were sitting in the cold all alone. The theme the author is trying to get across is that it is human nature to protect yourself and others in stressful situations. In the…

The use of Indian language shows the "local color" of the Yukon and shows the culture of the area. Determinism is used when the man in "To Build a Fire" dies. It is predetermined that he will die, by an outside force. It is also used in "Love of Life" when the man can't catch a ptarmigan but nature can as seen in this quote: "A black fox came toward him, carrying a ptarmigan in its mouth." Realism is a component of each story as well. The Yukon is real, the gold rush was real, and the Hudson Bay…

to show more ways to survive in the Yukon. This second example of Buck proving that he is fit to survive is learning that he cannot fall down in a fight. “So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you” (London 17). This quote is in the novel do to a dog named Curly getting into a fight and Curly falling down in the fight and got killed so now Buck knows not to fall down in a fight. Now Buck can show more ways to survive in the Yukon. This last example is explaining…

The wind howled as the fresh white snow swirled around him. Otzi, a 5’3 man with bright blue eyes had everything he could possibly need to survive in the vast Alp Mountains. He had his first aid kit and a fanny pack with him, prepared for any type of emergency. The fanny pack contained a fire kit, flint tools, a drill, and a sewing kit. After few hours of exploring, Otzi felt a really sharp pain in the side of his body. Using the needles from the sewing kit, he created acupuncture points to help…