Jack London's To Build A Fire

In Jack London’s “To build a fire” a man is faced with a challenge like no other. A man paired with only a dog and the gear he can carry on his back, struts far from the path to seek his own adventure. However, this leads him to an unfortunate fate. Nature is our protagonist’s main conflict. The central theme is man versus nature as seen throughout the story. An example would be shown in the following quote from the story “He felt the ice move under his feet. He had also heard the snow-covered-ice skin breaking”. “The sun was absent from the sky” this quote tells us that the sun was not shining that day which proves to be very troublesome. In the frigid lands of Canada’s Yukon Territory the temperatures can get very low, even into the negatives, and this alone is a challenge to face. The sun being gone only makes this worse. Already our protagonist is off to a bad start as he is left to make his way in the below freezing temperature while being pounded by the harsh winds. …show more content…
Our protagonist chooses to go off the path and take his own route. While doing so he had to overcome many difficulties one of them being he had no idea where he was, as seen in this quote “He was a newcomer in the land”. This quote holds evidence that our protagonist is already at a huge disadvantage when it comes to knowing his surroundings and this will aid in his downfall. While on his hike he walks in a marsh and imminently soaks his shoes and socks. This creates a huge problem because the cold water and below freezing temperature would eventually kill him and leads him to take off his shoes and socks (this would also make him noticeably colder than if they were on and dry). This means our protagonist will have to build a fire to warm himself up and dry his socks and shoes off. This becomes very crucial to our story and leads us into our next conflict,