Short Story Analysis: “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, Part 1

This is the first of two posts on my analysis of Jack London’s short story, “To Build a Fire.”

The first thing to realize about this story is that there are two versions, one London wrote in 1902 and one in 1908.  They are significantly different though the premises of the stories are the same.  I had read the 1902 version of “To Build a Fire” and never thought much of it. I could not understand how it could be so famous. I just had an opportunity to revisit the story.  It was the 1908 version and it was great. This I can see being a great story.  It is incredibly tense. 

Jack London is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild, a novel set in the arctic Yukon from the point of view of a house dog who finds himself lost in the arctic and reverts to his wild instincts.  He also wrote another novel, almost equally as good, called White Fang, a novel from the point of view of a wild arctic wolfdog that gets domesticated.  I loved both novels and recommend them both.  Jack London lived only to 40 years old (1876-1916) and was an adventurist, journalist, and writer.  He used the experiences from his adventures to form most of his fiction.  If you want to compare London with various writers, I would say good analogues would be Stephan Crane and Ernest Hemingway.  London’s writing can be categorized as Naturalism, a literary movement in the late 19^th century that sought to view humanity as mere animal and nature as deterministic, overwhelming, and confining.  In that sense, Stephan Crane might be a closer analogy than Hemingway, though there is some of that in Hemingway as well.  Whether you agree with the philosophy or not, it makes for great outdoor adventure stories.

“To Build a Fire” is also set in the Yukon north, but this 1908 story is told from the point of view of an unnamed human, male narrator.  [The 1902 version, the point of view is also from a male character, Tom Vincent, who needs to build a fire to stay alive in the Yukon but in that version that character calmly builds the fire and survives.  There is no dog in the 1902 version and is about one-third the length of the 1908 version.]  The narrative is one direct arc from setting off on the Yukon trail to meet up with his friends in a camp to ultimately * SPOILER * collapsing and freezing to death.  For the purpose of analysis, I divide the story into six parts.  I will walk you through the six parts.

First though, if you wish to read the story, you can find it online at American Literature.Com.  There are a number of audio reads on YouTube of “To Build a Fire” but frankly the best read is from a Substack called Classics Read Aloud.  Ruby Love, the owner of the Substack is a fantastic reader.  In my analysis, I will be citing from the Short Stories of Jack London: Authorized One Volume Edition, Edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, Milo Shepherd; Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1991. 

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Part 1:

The man sets off on the Yukon trail to meet up with his friends who are at camp some ten miles away (p. 282) and concludes at twelve noon when the man comes to a fork in the road (p. 286).  It is cold, colder than what the man understands, and though he is conscious of the danger ignores it.  Here is the opening paragraph that speaks to the strangeness of the environment.

 

Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth- bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was 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. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky- line and dip immediately from view.  (282)

Following the man is a dog who’s instinct understood the danger better than the man.

 

At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air. (283-4)

Here we see just how cold it is—beyond the man’s imagination—but instinctually the dog understands it.  What author is suggesting is the power of nature to overwhelm human capability to withstand it, and that man’s loss of instinct is a danger to himself.  The wild dog understands it because of his instinct.

Part of the trail the man is on runs along a frozen creek bed, and while the creek is frozen there are unfrozen spots that pose danger if one breaks through the ice and gets wet.  Wetness in this environment means instant freeze and the death of flesh.  The man calls these thin ice spots with water underneath, “traps.”  If he got wet he would be forced to build a fire to warm the flesh and dry the clothing.  At one point he forces the dog to walk over the ice to discern the danger.

 

In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps. Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing. It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung to it turned to ice. It 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. To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice- particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his chest.  (286)

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Part 2:

At noon, the man arrives at a fork in the creek, stops to eat, and feels the bitter cold on his exposed flesh (286).  He continues on when he breaks through ice and gets his feet wet (287).

 

At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too far south on its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at the speed he had made. If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six. He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. The action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not put the mitten on, but, instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a snow-covered log to eat. The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit. He struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating. He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.  (286-7)

 

Even before he cracks through the ice, the cold is starting to affect his flesh.  And then it happens.

The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard. Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white his moustache, eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so many springs on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any. And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through. It was not deep. He wetted himself half-way to the knees before he floundered out to the firm crust.  (287-8)

I’m struck on how London slips in, “And then it happened” in the middle of the paragraph.  This is actually the defining event of the story.  The rest of the story emanates from there.  One would have thought it would have been better highlighted.  Intuitively I might have started a new paragraph.  But if you want to suggest that the importance of events to a single person are incredibly small to ongoings of nature, I think London has chosen well. 

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Part 3:

The man’s feet break through the ice and are soaked halfway up to his knees (288).  He then builds a fire to dry his clothes and warm his flesh (289).

 

He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knew there must be no failure. When it is seventy- five below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire--that is, if his feet are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.

Part of the power of this story is that we are privy to the man’s thoughts as he experiences his environment and processes the events.  I have a word for such narrative process, contemplatio, the Latin word for contemplation.  It is sometimes referred to as “free indirect discourse” or “internal focalization.”  But I think those terms are broader.  Contemplatio focuses more on the character’s weighing of options or figuring out the circumstances and possibilities.  Anyway, that’s my term.  Here are some examples in this section.

All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice. Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down.

We see there his mind processing the old-timer’s advice and applying it to his circumstance.  London continues this processing—contemplatio—in the next paragraph.

The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him. When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it. The wires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.

 

Notice all he contemplates there: the old-timer’s advice, how he had now found it wrong, the hubristic thought that “all a man had to do was to keep his head…” and that he was such a man, and the thoughts on how his brain’s control of his lifeless fingers was “down.”  In addition to the contemplation, we see the irony that he had been warned of the dangers and because of his hubris had disregarded it.