The human brain is a marvel. It is a wonder the capability one has to think and process ideas and concepts. The problem solving ability of man exhibits the power of the brain. There is nothing capable of so much potential yet has such room for folly. In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” the main character exhibits several common flaws in man. Analysis of London’s work demonstrates how the story is a teaching for survival and understanding man’s failures with underlying themes about the human psyche. In brief, London’s story is about an unnamed man attempting to traverse a part of the Yukon to get to a mining camp. He is alone, except for a dog. The temperature is frigid.“It was seventy-five below zero” (London 102). The extremeness
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In Anthony Channell Hilfer’s analysis of the story, his claims that the man has two specific “fatal limitations”: a lack of “philosophical perspective, and he is self reliant” (1). The self-reliance issue would have been fixed if he would have heeded the words of the old-timers. Hilfer isolates the instance when the man approximated the temperature, and he did not realize his frailty nor “it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place of in the universe” (London 101). The man lacks scope. He does not realize the lack of power he has in nature; he does not know where he stands. The man is able to come to terms with who he is at his at the end. After, his fire is put out by the snow from the tree, his hands are extremely cold probably frost bitten. “The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms” (London 109). The man is unable to have tactile recognition; he is disconnected from his hands. It is ironic that now he is realizes his disconnect from the world. “He has been disconnected all along, and finally he dies of it” (Hilfer 3). Ultimately, the man is overconfident and unable to see his real place. This lack of perspective or awareness and his supposed autonomy are his cause of death. These fall under a similar vein of discussion as Bowen proposes, and this is another facet of his psyche that is
In Anthony Channell Hilfer’s analysis of the story, his claims that the man has two specific “fatal limitations”: a lack of “philosophical perspective, and he is self reliant” (1). The self-reliance issue would have been fixed if he would have heeded the words of the old-timers. Hilfer isolates the instance when the man approximated the temperature, and he did not realize his frailty nor “it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place of in the universe” (London 101). The man lacks scope. He does not realize the lack of power he has in nature; he does not know where he stands. The man is able to come to terms with who he is at his at the end. After, his fire is put out by the snow from the tree, his hands are extremely cold probably frost bitten. “The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms” (London 109). The man is unable to have tactile recognition; he is disconnected from his hands. It is ironic that now he is realizes his disconnect from the world. “He has been disconnected all along, and finally he dies of it” (Hilfer 3). Ultimately, the man is overconfident and unable to see his real place. This lack of perspective or awareness and his supposed autonomy are his cause of death. These fall under a similar vein of discussion as Bowen proposes, and this is another facet of his psyche that is