51 pages • 1 hour read
Jack LondonTo Build a Fire
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1902A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Dangers of Unimaginative Thinking
For most of the story, the man is disadvantaged by his lack of imaginative thinking. Early in the narrative, it is noted that “the trouble with him was that he was without imagination” (2). While he understands that he is traveling across an extremely cold and desolate landscape, he does not imagine the possible consequences that could result from this endeavor. In the early stages of his hike, he only imagines his arrival in camp in time for dinner. Soon, however, he finds himself with wet feet and struggling to build a fire. If he’d been a more imaginative thinker, he might have better planned for such a situation by hiking with a human companion. In this way, his lack of imagination can be connected to his death.
Later in the story, as he approaches death, there is irony in his suddenly flourishing imagination. As he runs along without feeling in his feet, he thinks about how he “had once seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the earth” (15). Now that he is likely leaving the earth, he is contemplating its mysteries.
While lying down and awaiting death, he imagines “the boys” finding his body, and then imagines himself alongside the boys when they make the discovery. Then, with nuanced physical detail, he pictures the old man and imagines admitting that he should’ve listened to him. He can now think imaginatively, but it is too late for him to save himself. If he’d had this capacity earlier, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have found himself in this situation in the first place.
Acceptance of One’s Own Death
At the outset of the hike, the man doesn’t seem aware of his own mortality. He trudges through the harsh landscape, planning to “be in to camp by six o’clock” where the boys would be waiting, “a fire would be going, and a hot supper would ready” (2). Despite the snow and extreme cold, it doesn’t occur to him that his life could be in danger.
When the snow puts out his fire, he becomes more conscious of his mortality. He looks at the spot where the fire was and feels like he has “just heard his own sentence of death” (10). Still, he struggles mightily to rebuild the fire. After this doesn’t work, he also fails to kill the dog, at which point “a certain fear of death, dull and oppressive” (15), begins to overtake him. He refuses to accept his death and becomes panicked, running erratically up the trail, hoping desperately to reach camp before he freezes to death. He tries to convince himself of the possibility of reaching “the boys” at camp. At the same time, he worries “that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead” (15).
He maintains a degree of denial about his impending death until his endurance fails him, and he falls a second time. He then “entertain[s] in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity” (16). In the end, he not only accepts his death, but embraces it in the way that he fully imagines the discovery of his body.
Value of Natural Instinct
Throughout the story, the man’s human reasoning (or lack thereof) is measured against the dog’s natural instinct, which is more trustworthy in the extreme climate. For lunch, the man builds a fire and the dog takes great pleasure in it. When the man resumes the hike, the dog “yearn[s] back toward the fire” (7). The dog inherently understands the dangers of the cold and knows that they shouldn’t be hiking when temperatures are so frigid. The dog truly understands cold because “all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge” (7). The man, on the other hand, doesn’t understand cold because he has an ancestry that is ignorant to it.
The man believes that he has the skills and experience necessary to traverse this harsh landscape. Though he may be a skilled outdoorsman, he lacks an instinct that tells him what precisely he should do. Rather than thinking through a situation, the dog has a primitive impulse that guides it toward the best possible chance of continued survival.
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By Jack London
