Jack London- To Build a Fire

To Build A Fire by Jack London is a short story, that I thought was pretty good. It was very long though, and was not one that you could just read real fast. You had to read the story, then take it all in and think about what you just read, and then at times you had to skim back over to see if you knew what was going on. This short story is about a man on the trail in sub zero weather trying to survive in the best way possible. I could pick out naturalism the most in this story. I thought what was going on in this story was pretty crazy though. This guy was trying to survive in these crazy temperatures of almost negative seventy- five. Naturalists were also the ones to believed that we were dominated by economic, social, and natural forces ("Regionalism" 487). I think that this defintion does show up in To Build A Fire by Jack London. In this story, Jack really talks about the natural forces that are going on that are affecting him on his way. He had to deal with the terrible temperatures, and all of the thick ice that at times was very unbearable.I mean that is just not good. I thought that when he brought his dog, that was kind of a good idea, but it reminded me of the movie Eight Below where a bunch of dogs got captured in the snow and those awful temperatures.“The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice.”

Also, I noticed when I was skimming through at the end, that the there were some mean things going on too. People were making it harder it seemed like, “They were traps. They hid pools of water under the snow...” (London 601-614). I think that shows us realism, because I think that the author, Jack London, wanted us to know that on top of everything else he had to go through a bunch of crap, because people did not care. "Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom,—no creek could contain water in that arctic winter,—but he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek" (London 601-614). Right here in this previous passage, I noticed just a little bit of the scary things that he had to deal with, especially water. Water is not a fun thing when its cold, especially if it is not safe. I think this is showing realism, because he was giving details of just exactly what he was going through.

Jack London's writing was not bad, and over all a pretty good story. I thought it was interesting to read the terrible things he had to go through, and in that time it was not adding anything good on top of what our country was already going through. The character must have really been struggling. I enjoyed reading this story overall though.

London, Jack. "To Build a Fire." American Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Columbus: McGraw Hill, 2009. 601-614. Print.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= Gamshrtsty0575&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 25, 2011)