"to Build a Fire" by Jack London

“To Build a Fire” by Jack London portrays through visual imagery and metaphors a battle against the relentless fist of nature and its unpredictability. London stresses how feeble man is compared to nature and even hints at the theories of Charles Darwin on survival of the fittest and natural selection. Throughout the story the dog that travels with the man cleverly represents instinct rather than simple intellectualism. Jack London consistently shows throughout the text how the man is doomed from the very beginning and nature has chosen his fate. In this story man is never the “fittest” and hope for success, in the eyes of the reader, seems nonexistent from the very beginning. The regular use of imagery, metaphors, and language functions centered on London’s portrayal of Darwinism creates an atmosphere representing naturalism at its finest through new criticism.

The imagery Jack London uses in the first few lines of the story shows how insignificant man is compared to Nature. The main character of the story is not even given a name and is shown pausing at the top of a steep bank where he ‘excuses the act to himself by looking at his watch”. In this image, the man is depicted as a small being in comparison with the “high earth-bank” and “fat spruce timberland”. Rather than proving himself as the mightier being, the man simply excuses himself with the pathetic cover-up of taking time to look at his watch. Jack London’s naturalistic writing shines through when he shows nature as the peak of the food chain in this instance specifically. Furthermore, to prove how insignificant humans are compared to nature, the man is not given a name from the very beginning. As a newcomer to the land, the man is simply described vaguely as a “chechaquo” and his demise is foreshadowed by his ignorance to his place in the world. For the man “fifty degrees below zero meant eight-odd degrees of frost and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural