In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” important elements of setting include the location, time of day, weather, and the environment itself, which all combine to create an increasingly cold and hopeless mood. By the second paragraph we learn that the main character is a lone, inexperienced traveler in the Yukon in Alaska during the winter. Such a location gives readers an instant sense of remote loneliness, isolation even. Specifically, the man has...
In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire,” important elements of setting include the location, time of day, weather, and the environment itself, which all combine to create an increasingly cold and hopeless mood. By the second paragraph we learn that the main character is a lone, inexperienced traveler in the Yukon in Alaska during the winter. Such a location gives readers an instant sense of remote loneliness, isolation even. Specifically, the man has already left the main trail and veered onto “a little-traveled trail [that] led east through the pine forest.” So although he is even more isolated, the sun is before him, since it is 9:00 a.m. This fact does give a sense of hopefulness. After all, he has all day to get to his destination: a camp on Henderson Creek where “the boys were already.”
Yet the weather is foreboding from the start. The first sentence tells us “Day had dawned cold and gray,” and we soon learn that it is 75 degrees below zero. It is so cold that the man’s lips freeze together (aided by his tobacco drool), making it difficult for him to eat his lunch. He gradually becomes so numb that he can’t even feel himself running. The weather itself actually remains constant throughout, but it creates a building sense of panic in readers as we watch this foolish man slowly freeze to death.
Tied to the weather, the environment is his antagonist all the way. The tricky ice that his wolf-dog falls through weakens them both, as the man has to remove his mittens to help it get ice out of its toes. The first fire gives us some sense of relief and hope, but when his second fire is put out by snow falling from a tree, the mood darkens to one of hopelessness.
By the end when the man sits in the snow to fall asleep into death, “The brief day ended in a long evening.” The dog, part of the natural environment, curls its tail around its feet and passively watches the man, waiting. On smelling death, it lifts its head in a long, lonely howl, then trots off toward the camp at Henderson Creek as the stars “leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky.” Nature is impervious to man’s struggles, leaving us with a hopeless mood, feeling cold and insignificant.
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