As a Naturalist, Jack London presents human beings as
subject to natural forces beyond their control. As is evident in London's story, "To
Build a Fire," this idea is at the center of the narrative. In the exposition, there is
clear foreshadowing of nature's forces being in charge of the
day.
- It is cold and gray, exceedingly cold.
However, the "newcomer," the chachaquo, misjudges the temperature.
It is a clear day, and yet
there seemed an intangible pall over the face of
things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of
sun.
- Nevertheless,
this fact does not worry the man. Not the grayness of the sky, the lack of sun, the
tremendous cold, or the strangeness of it all bothered
him. - Because this is his first winter the man "lacks
imagination." He has not had to contemplate life and death. The fifty degrees below
zero means eighty-odd degrees of frost--that was all. It did not impress upon him
to meditate upon man's frailty in general, able
only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and
cold.
- When he
steps outside, the man spits. At fifty degrees below zero, spit crackles on the snow at
fifty below, but this spit crackled in the air. Still the man thinks, "...the
temperature did not matter." - The dog's instinct tells it
a "truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment," London
writes. - The dog questions every move of the man,
expecting him to return to the camp. The dog had learned about fire and yearned for
one; it does not want to go out into this
cold.
All the elements of nature as well as
the dog indicate the unfavorableness of going out into the brutal cold, yet "the man
held steadily on." With much foreshadowing of the danger of his setting out, Jack
London's neophyte sets forth into the cold and ominous setting.
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