Who Is The Narrator In 'To Build A Fire'

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick. Whether you've heard this famous saying or not, it seems to ring true. For example, when you were a child, you were told that Santa Claus is existent and that he's the one that comes down your chimney (if you happen to have one), place presents under your Christmas tree, and bite into the cookies and drink the milk left out for him. So you believed it because you simply suppose "My parents wouldn't lie to me, right?!” Yet once you've gotten to that certain age where you were able to decipher reality from the imaginary, your parents needed to enlighten you about the truth merely as a result of you finally catching up to this lie. But once you've figured …show more content…
That's what the quote by Philip K. Dick proposes to the understanding and interpretation of “To Build a Fire”. Philip K. Dick is trying to help us recognize that no matter how much we choose not to believe in something, it's still going to be there because it exists and its actuality. What intensifies this situation even further is that even the man’s husky wolf-dog knew that this wasn't the type of weather to be traveling in. But of course humans in their nature fail to realize the obvious occasionally. Even the dog knew that in order to survive in such weather, you'd have to build a fire. The title implies it; so Jack London, the author, wouldn't be compelled to mention survival in the title considering the title already speaks for …show more content…
He utilizes this technique to reveal the constant battle of man's vs. nature (which is his tactic of revealing this type of reality). Also, his use of determinism has enlightened us to the fact that the environment around the man basically doesn’t care about his presence. It isn’t human as we are so the man has no choice but to accept nature’s indifferent and deterministic ways towards him. Lastly, Jack London’s use of survival and how that became the man’s prime motivation to defend himself against nature became essential. Just as nature was careless about the man’s presence, so was it careless about the frost bites it was giving the man in his fingers and toes. Nature merely doesn’t care about his survival either! But his death could have been prevented if only the man had an imagination. He would then have a subconscious understanding of what Philip K. Dick meant in his