Jack London, in his short story, To Build a Fire, narrates the tale of a lone, unnamed man who embarks on a mission of travelling along the banks of Yakun, on a treacherously cold winter morning, to a base camp where his boys are waiting for him. He is comparatively a stranger in the place, and an elder from Sulphur Creek appeals to him not to undertake the journey at such extreme weather conditions. The man ignores the old one’s advice and gets off, accompanied by a wolf-dog. What follows is the harrowing story of the challenges that the man encounters on his way. The frosty terrain literally freezes the man and, unable to rescue himself from the ferocity of nature, he finally succumbs to his death while the animal survives and goes off to its destination. The most unique thing about the story is the manner in which London underpins the theme of the conflict between instinct and knowledge in this saga of a man and a beast.
London alludes to the vanity of the man’s knowledge right from the beginning of the story when he portrays the man taking pride in the fact that he has accepted the challenge of daring to walk nine miles when the temperature was 60 degrees below freezing point. Though the man is aware of the statistics about the weather, London hints that he is not conscious of its significance or the implications it might have on his life, because he has never experienced it, being “a new comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter.” (London). On the other hand, the animal appears dejected by the prospect of having to embark on this journey as if its instinct has warned it of the imminent dangers such an endeavour will bring upon it. Thus, from the onset of the story itself London provides clues for his audience regarding the theme of the conflict between the man’s knowledge and the animal’s instinct, of which the latter commands an upper hand.
The relevance of the theme becomes more pronounced in the episode where the man forces the dog to lead, perhaps based on the knowledge that the spring in the area never freezes and the frozen snow on the top conceals it. There can be hidden traps and if a person happens to walk into it, the snow will cave in and drench the foot. Though the dog slips into a pitfall, it recovers, and “made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. This was a matter of instinct.” (London). Later in the story, when the man himself gets his feet wet, he is compelled to remove his shoes and sustain frostbite, which entails all those calamities that finally spell his doom. None of his knowledge comes to his rescue whereas the dog’s instinct saves it from possible freezing of its paw and subsequent death.
Though the story portrays several themes like the ferocity of nature and man’s struggle against it etc, the most prominent of these is the conflict between knowledge and instinct, as is evidenced from the above discussions. This conflict forms the core of the story as can be discerned from the man’s fate. Despite his knowledge and awareness about the things around him he fails not only in his mission but also in his capability to survive fierce weather conditions. His knowledge again prompts him to think that if he runs, “his feet will thaw out; and anyway if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys.” (A Critique of Jack London’s To Build A Fire). But this knowledge also fails to salvage him. On the other hand, the dog, which is a lesser being, survives the savagery of nature by its simple instinct. Humans take pride in the fact that they are intellectually well endowed and claim superiority over other animals. But when it comes to the basic fact of surviving in hostile environments, it can be seen that animals, which depend on their basic instinct alone, are better equipped than the humans.
Works Cited
A Critique of Jack London’s To Build A Fire. Azete. 2006. Web.
London, Jack. To Build A Fire. The World of Jack London, 2009. Web.