Comparing The Man And The Dog In Jack London's To Build A Fire

In the short story, "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, a man is hiking with a dog through the Klondike towards a camp containing other travelers in below seventy-five-degree temperatures. Throughout the story, he experiences many obstacles along his path due to nature and his own misdoings. He is unable to identify and interpret the correct measures to take, making his trek much more difficult, and this, along with the glacial temperatures, is what ultimately results in the man's death. Because of his lack of experience in travelling, his lack of a relationship with the dog, and his lack of heeding the advice of an older, experienced traveler, the man is not fit to survive the forbidding climate of the Klondike. The man has no experience in …show more content…
Throughout the story, the man is cruel to the dog, explaining why "there [is] no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. . .So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man" (1830). This shows that if the man had not been so harsh to the dog, he could have received some guidance from the dog that may had helped him live. Additionally, the dog judges both the man and his actions. For example, the dog thinks to itself, "This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing point" (1830). This conveys the idea that the dog knew the dangers of the climate of the Klondike, whereas the man did not, and if their relationship was stronger, the dog may have tried to bring those dangers to the man's attention. Furthermore, towards the end of the story, once the man has already died, London discloses that "it [the dog] turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers" (1836). This shows that the dog could have potentially helped the man get to the camp, but because the dog only cared about itself due to the man's cruelness, he did not. The man is unfit to survive in the Klondike due to his lack of a relationship with the …show more content…
In the story, he is proved to be inexperienced time after time, and it is even stated that it was his first time experiencing the winter of the Klondike. Due to his cruelness towards his only companion on his trek, a dog, he does not receive any help from that dog when it knew exactly what to do in comparison to the man's lack of knowledge on how to do nearly anything. In addition, he does not listen to the advice that an experienced traveler gives him. Because of these many things, the man was not fit to survive the extreme climate of the