Jack London: To Build a Fire


Jack London's story "To Build a Fire" is an interesting example of naturalism. Reading the story, it is obvious that nature holds no regard for the man and is a powerful force on the man. It is also easy to see that the man's own stubbornness and disregard of the old man's warnings contributed to his ultimate failure.In those two examples we see the major types of conflict, man versus self and man versus nature, that appear in naturalist writings, as described in the background. Donald Pizer, an English professor at Tulane University, sees the emphasis more on the struggle between man and nature. The story, to him, is a survival story (223). He doesn't see the man's mistakes as the important factor. Pizer says London is showing readers that "the world, under certain conditions, can be an extremely dangerous place. If through ignorance, inexperience, false self-confidence, and the ignoring of what others have learned and told us (all weaknesses shared by the man) we challenge these conditions, we are apt to be destroyed by them." (223). This idea that humans cannot control their own fate as much as they like to think is central to naturalism. London's writing brought naturalism life in well written stories that exemplified important points of the movement.