Significance of Dying and Death in To Build a Fire :: Build Fire Essays

  Signifi dopece of Dying and Death in To Build a Fire            The significance of the words dying and death in Jack Londons 1910 novel, To Build a Fire continuously expresses the bits dwindling warmth and bad luck in his journey along the Yukon cut to meet the boys at camp.   London associates dying with the creations diminishing ability to stay warm in the frigid Alaskan climate. The main characters predicament slowly worsens mavin level at a time finally resulting in death. The narrator informs the reader the man lacks personal experience travelling in the Yukon terrain.  The old-timer warned the man about the harsh realities of the Klondike.  The confident main character thinks of the old-timer at Sulphur Creek as womanish.  Along the trail, the man falls into a transcendental spring and attempts to build a muster out to dry his socks and warm himself.  With his wet feet quickly growing numb, he realiz es he has only one chance to successfully build a brace or face the harsh realities of the Yukon at one-hundred nine degrees below freezing.  Falling snow from a tree blots out the sacking and the character realizes he had just heard his own sentence of death.  Jack London introduces death to the reader in this scene.  The man realizes a second fire must be built without fail.  The mans creative thinker begins to run wild with thoughts of insecurity and death when the second fire fails.  He recollects the story of a man who kills a steer to stay warm and envisions himself killing his dog and crawling into the carcass to warm up so he can build a fire to save himself. London writes, a certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him.   As the man slowly freezes, he realizes he is in serious trouble and can no longer make excuses for himself.  Acknowledging he would never get to the camp and would soon be stiff and dead, he tries to clear this mor bid thought from his mind by running down the trail in a last ditch effort to pump blood through his extremities. The climax of the story describes the man picturing his body completely frozen on the trail.   He falls into the snow thinking, he is bound to freeze anyway and freezing was not as bad as people thought.  There were a lot worse ways to die.  The man drowsed off into the most comfortable and