Jack London Character Analysis

Jack London: A Peek at Man’s Mortality Beating within the core of every living creature is the instinct for survival. These basic skills have been passed down from generation to generation to help life survive. In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, an unnamed man decides to go against the warnings of the village elder and travels alone in negative fifty-degree weather that was rapidly dropping. He makes one bad decision after the other which leads to his demise. Jack London wrote, “To Build a Fire” to show how a man can override his instincts by succumbing to his own pride. By showing how he learned through his own experiences in the Klondike, creating an unnamed character, what that man represented, and comparing this character to instinctually stronger characters London was able to warn his readers through his stories about the importance of instinct for survival. Jack London learned the hard way about the relentless cold the Klondike provided. The author initially perceived himself as infallible in the Klondike upon his arrival. The writer traveled to the Yukon himself in search for gold. While there he was issued warnings about how capricious the weather was and to be prepared for the worst. Caleb Crain reflects in his biography, “Four …show more content…
In, "'Keeping His Head': Repetition And Responsibility In London's 'To Build A Fire.'.", Lee Clark Mitchell argues that man’s unrelenting superiority mixed with his poor choices had led to his fate. Mitchell proposes that had he remained to attune to his surrounding his fate may have been different. (Mitchell 86) He chooses to ignore his body’s signals by not focusing on how fragile his life is and instead focusing on the illusion that to be a man you must deal with uncomfortable scenarios. London was pleased that the man’s pride rendered the reader void of pity. The author felt that this character would teach his audience to reflect on their own