VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE WRITING REPORT TO BUILD A FIRE – JA[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE WRITING REPORT TO BUILD A FIRE – JACK LONDON Instructor : PhD Trần Nhật Nam Class : 2120NVA07904 Student’s full name : Lê Ngọc Nguyên - 2057010211 Nguyễn Kiều Xuân Trang - 2057010102 Phạm Thị Tuyết Nhi - 205701 Nguyễn Hoàng Minh Thư - 2057010099 Hoàng Thị Hải Vân - 2057010111 Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhiên - 1857010263 Huỳnh Mỹ Quyên - 2057010239 Đinh Trường Hàn Ngân - 1757020038 WRITING REPORT TO BUILD A FIRE – JACK LONDON I THE AUTHOR AND THE WORK (Lê Ngọc Nguyên) The author The iconic American novelist, short story writer, journalist and social activist, Jack London is best known for writing Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang Jack was born in San Francisco, California on January 12, 1876 It is not known for sure whether his parents Flora Wellman and William Henry Chaney were married But after Chaney left Flora, she married John London who gave Jack his last name Flora’s second marriage also gave jack two half sisters, Eliza and Ida The family moved several times before finally settling in Oakland where Jack completed grade school Living in a working class family with a low income, Jack was forced to contribute to the family income by selling newspapers at the age of 10 Despite living in a crude environment, fighting to survive every day, London was an ambitious young man, always enthusiastic about his future He was very fond of reading and writing Discovering a library in Oakland, London engrossed himself in the exploration of literature He labored at various jobs such as working as a cannery and a jute mill, and also worked as a window-washer, watchman, and longshoreman Also at an early age, London learned to sail and bought himself a sloop from borrowed money and worked as an Oyster Pirate in the Bay But when his own sloop was robbed, London set off to become a beggar His days as a tramp gave London a deep insight into class systems and human behavior London soon realized he wanted a better life for himself and upon returning to California he went to Oakland high school and later entered the University of California at Berkeley However, he dropped out before finishing due to shortage of finances For quite long a time, London had also been busy writing while studying and working His first story, Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan (1893) was written while he was on the sloop off the coasts of Siberia and Japan London began taking writing seriously and begun a successful career as a writer London joined the Socialist Labour Party in 1896 His socialist views are evident in his writings such as “The Iron Heel” (1908) In 1987 London left for the Klondike during the Gold Rush He did not find any gold, instead got sick with scurvy During that painful winter, London wrote “To Build a Fire” His writings also made way to significant magazines such as the Overland Monthly and The Atlantic Monthly A couple of favorite Jack London quotes: "Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well." "The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage." "A bone to the dog is not charity Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." The work (To Build a Fire) “To Build a Fire” is a short story written by Jack London This story was originally published in 1902, with the famous version being published in 1908 The story is written based on London’s travels across the terrain of Alaska and Canada in 1897-98 during the Klondike gold rush While other works by London have since been faulted as overly sensational or hastily written, "To Build a Fire" is still regarded by many as an American classic Involving such themes as fear, death, and the individual versus nature, "To Build a Fire" has been categorized as a naturalistic work of fiction in which London depicts human beings as subject to the laws of nature and controlled by their environment and their physical makeup With its short, matter-of-fact sentences, "To Build a Fire" is representative of London's best work, which influenced such later writers as Ernest Hemingway II PLOT (Phạm Thị Tuyết Nhi) Plot diagram Exposition The exposition of this story contains the first fourteen paragraphs, and manages to show us the fundamental information of this story, such as the setting, characters, and the basic thoughts about the initial situation From the first sentence - “DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank,” and the details “it was nine o'clock,” and “this was his first winter”, the readers can quickly figure out that this story takes place on a severely cold, gray morning in Yukon, which is never ideal for a long journey In terms of characters, this story focuses on an unnamed man and the dog following him The man is a newcomer in Yukon and lacks imagination "He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances," and for him “fifty degrees below zero [merely] meant eightyodd degrees of frost.” Even after realize the weather was cold, he still “took the creek trail up the left fork.” He is completely unaware of how dangerous this weather could be, which explains why he wanted to get to the camp at Henderson Creek, where his friends were waiting for him regardless of the warning of his predecessor Walking at his heels was a dog, and unlike the man, this dog seemed to acknowledge the coldness of the weather as well as knew what to to keep it warm, showing through the details that the dog continued to have its doubts about traveling on such a cold day and did not want to leave the fire when the man got up to keep walking All of these elements of the exposition establish the man versus nature conflict because we know that the man would undertake a dangerous journey and might encounter serious deadly challenges along the way Raising actions Raising actions in this story lasts for the next 14 paragraphs, from paragraph number 15 to paragraph 28, with five events that threaten his survival These raising actions begin when the man broke through water and soaked his feet Being in the cold that he had never experienced before, he became angry and knew he needed to warm him up immediately He succeeds in building another fire, but the fire is soon “blotted out” and “where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.” The fire was extinguished by the falling snow from a spruce Then, he attempted to build another fire in an open space However, with an entirely numb body, he was unable to hold the matches properly Given that he even used his mouth to hold the match, it just “fell into the snow and went out.” Then the man “caught the whole bunch [of remaining matches] between the heels of his hands” to build a final fire and tried his best to keep it survive, yet "shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered.” The conflicts between the unnamed man and the cruel cold of Yukon become more and more intense and apparent through each event The more he tried to build a fire, the more he failed, which only pushed him over the edge The advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek reoccurring in the man’s head several times throughout the story is the proof of his psychological transformation and growing panic, which is from “Those oldtimers were rather womanish” “after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner.” The character manages to calm his fears, but all in vain He needed to something to rescue him from his awaiting death Climax The climax comes when he decided to kill his dog and bury his hands in its warm body, which is illustrated in the next three paragraphs At this point, the man did not care about morality or the emotional attachment between him and his dog but considered this animal his last hope of survival However, given his determination to kill the dog, his freezing body does not allow him to what he wants, which is a real crisis He was preoccupied by “a certain fear of death” In a final act of desperation, he ran blindly to the camp regardless of the fact that he might lose some fingers and toes and some of his face At this moment, the tension of the story’s atmosphere, the man’s desire to survive, and his depression reach their peaks Falling actions The man could not defeat the brutal cold and his freezing body, so he gave up and accepted that “he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently” to meet death “with dignity.” With that concept in mind, he allowed himself to fall asleep as if he was “taking an anesthetic.” Before freezing to death, he had visions of his friends finding his dead body Unlike the raising action stage and climax stage, the man's mind was calm, peaceful, and willing to die He had no fear at that moment Then he saw the old-timer from Sulphur Creek and admitted “You were right, old hoss; you were right," revealing that he learned his lesson although that lesson cost his life Resolution As a result of falling actions, the man died in peace and not in pain anymore, which is indicated in the detail saying that “he drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.” The dog sat for a while, waiting for the man to set a fire Yearning for the fire, it started whining loudly and then “trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew” since it is the only way to survive Conflict in Plot Man vs nature: The man vs The wilderness of Yukon The man tried hard to meet his boys at the agreed location and time, but the thick ice made his journey impossible The man attempted to overcome the challenges of the environment to survive, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not build a fire to warm his freezing body He overestimates his capabilities and underestimate the brutality of nature, making him overlook all of the signals indicating a dangerous journey he might encounter His arrogance is opposite to the instinct of the dog, which allows it to survive even in the harsh weather He insisted on running and moving while the husky wolf dog naturally knew not to move a lot but lie burrowed on the snow At the end, the man expectedly died in the harsh winter in Yukon In fact, the death of the man shows that humanity's existence is nothing in the universe Nature still stays the same even without considering whether humans live or die Therefore, humans have to adjust themselves to the environment if they want to survive Plot techniques Foreshadowing Foreshadowing is used effectively to build up the climax The foreshadowing presented by the environment and what the characters say gives us hints about what the man would go through along the journey Even at the bare beginning of the story, there is a foreshadowing detail of the trouble that the man would encounter when the author mentions "a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland", and "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.” The weather is illustrated as a sign shadowing dangerous things that were about to come The detail saying that the man's fire was "blotted out'' is another example of foreshadowing At this point, the readers can easily realize that the man could not start any other fires His life at that time was just like a dim candle and could be extinguished at any time The advice of the old-timer - "no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below" and the narrator in the very beginning illustrating the dog, which is "Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment, "are details of foreshadowing, giving the reader a clue about the fate of the dog and its owner at the end of the story Suspense The suspense technique is used to describe the survival of the man It appears when the man fell into an ice-cold stream, when his fires were put out because of the falling snow and his numb body, and when he could not kill the dog These deadly events happening to the man intensively, developing the anticipation among the readers Flashback The technique of flashback is used whenever the man recalled the saying and behavior of his predecessor - "That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country," "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," "Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought," The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner," " Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right," ""You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek." Everytime he recalled the old-timer of Sulphur Creek, his attitude gradually changed, from underestimating those pieces of advice to accepting they were all correct That is to say, the flashback technique that London uses in this work allows readers to understand the psychological transformation of the man and keep readers thrilled until the last page of this story III SETTING (Trịnh Trương Yến Mỹ) Physical setting The story is set to take place in the Yukon which is formerly called Yukon Territory The Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canada’s three territories It is said that no other place in North America gets as cold as the Yukon during extreme cold snaps “There was no sun nor a 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.” The tremendous cold and the darkness are harsh conditions that the man had been suffering for days Indeed, it was fifty degrees below zero with the absence of the sun from the sky It was unbroken white snow to his eyes These are accessible to the way he expressed his will of life in difficulty Moreover, the harsh conditions of the environment mainly create the conflicts between the main character and nature The cold pushed him to fight and find ways to survive in Yukon Eventually, he came up with the thought of building a fire many times The fire is considered as a symbol of light and warmth that is against the freeze and darkness of the story Besides, the cold also creates the atmosphere of hopelessness and desperation throughout the story It reveals the ending of the story that the man had no hope to get out of Yukon and survive, he would fail in the battle with nature, he would die anyway The physical settings emphasize the man’s individualism and arrogance Chronological settting The protagonist sets out to hike through the forests bordering the Yukon River on a winter day The temperature has fallen to −75 °F (−59 °C) Winter in Yukon is the harshest climate for people to survive It triggers an intense conflict between nature and the protagonist Emphasizing how cold it is during winter days, Jack London also highlights the image of the fire which symbolizes life He created a contrary effect on the fire and the cold and darkness of winter Moreover, “To Build a Fire” is written in the context of the Klondike Gold Rush The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899 Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896 As a result, there was a stampede of prospectors landing on Yukon with ambitions of reaching the gold fields Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain That partly explains why the main character in the story desired to discover the timberland irrespective of the tremendous cold Furthermore, Jack London would like to immortalize this era He reflected how harsh the Yukon is as well as how ambitious people are IV CHARACTERS (Nguyễn Kiều Xuân Trang) The man Physical description The story’s protagonist is an unnamed man who is hiking alone in the Klondike There is little description of the man, other than that he is a chechaquo - a newcomer to Yukon Not until paragraph did London describe him as a man who has a beard and “high cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air” His goal at the start of the story is to reach the camp to meet "the boys," presumably to prospect for gold Throughout the whole story, when the weather is getting colder and colder, he keeps rubbing his cheekbones and his nose in order to keep them away from the numbness. Psychological description Ignorance The man's greatest deficiency, leading to his death, is his inability to think about the future consequences of present actions or facts; at the beginning of the story, London describes how the extreme cold does not make the man meditate upon mortality His “lack of imagination” makes him unable to envision the dangers that could befall him in a situation of such extreme cold, alone in a remote wilderness As the story progresses, he starts to become aware of the motif of the cold through his repetitive thoughts “It certainly was cold” was repeated times “There was no mistake about it, it was cold.” “it was very cold and he never experienced such cold” However, it seems that the man sees nature as something to overcome rather than to acknowledge it The guy knows it's cold, but the monstrously huge arctic winterscape surrounding him doesn't inspire any profound thoughts about the fragility of his life As far as he's concerned, it's just really cold He laughs off the crucial advice from the old man of Sulphur Creek about traveling with an acquaintance because he thinks he knows what he's doing. “he had laughed at him at the time!” “He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled.” “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 was to keep his head, and he was alright.” Individualism The man’s individualism is not only shown through the way he ignores the old-timer warning but also through the way he treats his dog as a tool of sacrification “Once, sensing danger, he made the dog go ahead” “The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head [ ] He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until feeling returned to them.” Perseverance 10 Despite all of the negative characteristics above that get him into trouble, he continues to fight for survival “Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in the protection of which he ate his biscuits For the moment the cold of space was outwitted” In a hard condition, the man manages to keep himself alive and kicking by lit up a fire methodically The guy has to thaw out his face to eat his lunch, but he just takes it all in stride Later on, he still works methodically, but the guy knows he is in deep now In some of the other quotes, he might seem completely clueless because of his calmness But this quote clears up the mystery for us and shows us that yes, he knows he's in danger, and yes, he continues to remain calm in spite of it “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.” His incredible ability to persevere under pressure in difficult circumstances continues throughout the story until desperation hits him The man's reckless sprint for the camp might be the only moment in the story when he truly gives in to his panic This moment doesn't last very long, though, before he regains his composure and accepts the fact that he should die with dignity The man has done absolutely everything in his power to save himself, but it seems like he might have been doomed from the start “The thought of death drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong It was his last panic When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.” The dog “a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother-the wild wolf” 11 The Husky is set as a foil to the man as it is instinctive in nature It is not just a companion but also a tool Husky is known to be well adapted for such cold conditions, apprehends dangers, and knows how to fend for itself It doesn’t need facts to sniff danger and stay away from one It knows that the day isn’t right for traveling and, unlike the man, clearly knows its limits The dog has what we are told, an inherited knowledge, relayed by lines of ancestry that had been through such cold. “But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge And it knew that it was not good to abroad in such fearful cold.” The man had inherited some knowledge too, a knowledge of a different kind: the advice of the old-timers Indeed, the experience of others is a knowledge inherited by us and such knowledge has formed the basis of human civilization However, the man chooses to ignore this precious knowledge as well A little more humility was all that was required of him to stay alive Naturally, the arrogance of the intellect is humbled before the promptings of instinct Besides that, the dog has no intimacy with the man Its attitude towards the man is skittish, untrusting, and only follows the man out of fear (under the physical abuse from the man) and the need for survival rather than loyalty. “On the other hand, there was no keen of intimacy between the dog and the man.” “the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash.” “So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man” In the end, the wolf-dog doesn't realize right away that the man has died The pooch isn't used to seeing a guy sit in the snow for so long without a fire But when it catches the stink of death coming off the man, it howls for a minute and then continues trotting toward the mining camp, where it knows it can find more fire and food It sees humans as food and fire providers, not as buddies He can use them for his survival, but he's not about to sit around and mourn their loss 12 The old-timer Unlike the main character, the old-timer from Sulphur Creek might be able to see beyond the surface of the world and appreciate the "significance" of things He seems to have learned the great lesson of the north, which is that human beings are just tiny bags of flesh and blood competing against thousands of miles of rock and ice and snowy spruce trees Earlier in the story, the main character thinks this old man (and other old men like him) can be a little too "womanish" But later, the main character ends up dying largely because he has underestimated the old-timer's wisdom The boys The boys at the mining camp on Henderson Creek have a strong presence in this story without ever being seen or heard from They represent a warm fire and delicious food, but also a sense of companionship that's reflected in the way the narrator keeps referring to them as "the boys." All in all, they give off a youthful and brotherly vibe They have all taken a direct route to the camp, while the main character (maybe to show how awesome he is) has taken a roundabout way to check out timber prospects for the coming spring At the end of the story, the main character imagines himself among these boys, coming down Henderson Creek and discovering his own frozen body For a moment, it seems like that is the terminal lucidity of the man before losing his conciousness and leaving his life benhind V TONE (Nguyễn Hoàng Minh Thư) There are two main tones throughout the story, candid and apathetic Candid Jack London’s writing style is direct and straightforward The writer tells almost everything directly to the point, whereas others tend to form things quite complicated in order that the readers must think critically In terms of vocabulary, Jack London’s is quite easy to read His thoughts are also logical If you look closely at this work, you will see that 13 it is written in neat paragraphs that are all around the same length Some sentences are quite long, but London creates lines that are punchy and concise In spite of the straightforward writing style, the sentence construction and the words make the readers imagine vividly the story Consequently, the readers feel as if there were in the story and could position themselves as the man in the Yukon A big part of London’s genius (and one of the reasons he is still so widely read) is that he really picks its spots when it comes to throwing out a million-dollar word For example, at the beginning of the story’s second paragraph: “The man flung a look back along the way he had come The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice On top of this ice were as many feet of snow It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed”. He might just use a fancy term like “undulations”, but he surrounds it with a whole bunch of one or two-syllable words to make its appearance much more effective Apathetic Throughout the story, the narrator adopts a distant tone, seldom expressing his thoughts on the man and his actions The narrator merely reports the action just as it is, without much emotion involved The main character of the story is in the Yukon territory of Canada, traveling in subzero weather He hasn’t been given any name He is just a specimen that is placed in the experimental setting of a Naturalist narrative His anonymity is a trademark of Naturalism because it permits the narrator to retain the dispassionate distance of an observer and prevents the narrator from attaching any feeling to the character, lest it interferes with the outcomes we deduce Sometimes, he is subjective to some extent The writer makes a decision about the man based on what he believes Without any sentiment or investment, the narrator explains the incredibly cold temperatures and the man's frozen visage. “DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray [ ].” “There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky.” 14 The author shows no sympathy for the man In my opinion, Jack London did not like or feel sympathy for his main character, the man He seemed to make the character to be arrogant and disrespectful to the environment and elders All of the good attributes were given to the dog and the old-timer. “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.” Moreover, there are two more tones we can find in the story Grim At the beginning of the story, we can realize that the tone is going to be quite grim, which means something is gloomy, serious, or unpleasant, because of the first sentence in which London states, “DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray [ ].” The sun does not shine in the north throughout the winter, making it much colder because there is no source of heat Jack London makes it clear that it was dark and very cold London states a bunch of code words and restates them within the story, to ensure that the reader knows how cold it is, such words as cold, gray, and gloom. The narrative "To Build a Fire" had two versions written by Jack London, the first of which was much shorter The difference between the first and second versions is that in the second there was a dog and the man ends up dying at the end of the story The first version still has the same impression of being very cold and dark though, and all the situations are not as much in detail In the end, the man survives and returns to the camp, which is given a big relief for the reader In the second story, Jack London wrote to build up the reader with a lot of extra information that he left off in the first While reading, you get so into the story with all of the vivid detail that the author puts in it that you want the man to survive and back to camp like the first version, but in the end, he places a big let-down on the story and has the man die With all of the extra detail, it is easier for the reader to understand exactly how cold it is and how much snow there is covering the ground 15 Cautionary As a consequence, the cautionary tone is realized The narrator adds to the ominous tone as the story progresses illustrating the man’s awareness of the cold with brief aside such as “It certainly was cold.” “This repetition not only helps develop the creeping sense of danger but also makes the intense cold much more visceral” (“To Build a Fire Plot Summary”) As part of the literary naturalist movement, the description of the impacts of this bitter chill repeatedly and in a tone of vague surprise helps it creep into the readers’ consciousness in tangible disturbing ways VI MOOD (Hoàng Thị Hải Vân) For a lonely traveler, the Yukon winter is a perilous place "To Build a Fire," by Jack London, describes such a beautiful yet deadly environment In this narrative, a man must travel a long distance across the frozen tundra and risk dying from exposure However, this man is unfamiliar enough with his surroundings to recognize the danger he is in The author uses precise word choices, or diction, throughout this short story to create a melancholy yet hopeful, lonely and dread of death mood At first, the story is recounted in simple phrases with no passion, demonstrating the man's careless attitude To depict the severe coldness in Yukon, the author uses phrases like "the trouble with him was that he was without imagination" and " a thought that never entered his head." The man seems unconcerned about the lack of sunshine because such weather is common in the far north He is also so confident that he will be at the campsite by nightfall that he merely brings matches and lunch Even his initial impression of Yukon being incredibly cold is insufficient to persuade him The story might make readers feel desolate yet hopeful right from the start By continually repeating the time, the author conveys the man's expectation The time shows that the man is concerned about his travel speed and is looking forward to meeting the boys at the camp Furthermore, the rapidity of freezing makes the readers concerned about what will happen next and curious about his reaction Since the freezing speed is linked to the temperature and the risk of death in extreme cold 16 In addition, the isolated atmosphere pervades the whole story When the man looks around him, all he sees is snow in every direction, emphasizing the story's feeling of loneliness and isolation Through evocative visuals, Jack London creates a lonely atmosphere The imagery, which the author uses to convey this feeling for readers, are: "There was nobody to talk to," "a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last runners In a month no man had come up or down that silent creek.'' and “If only he had a trail-mate he would have been in no danger now The trail-mate could have built the fire." With the aim to meet the boys, he starts the hazardous and solitary journey on his own However, what does he get? Shiver, desolation and fear are all things which this trek gives him As the man realizes how unprepared he was for the extreme cold weather, the mood in this story slowly shifts London writes, "a certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him." As the man gradually freezes, he understands he is in grave danger and that he can no longer manufacture excuses Recognizing that he "would never get to the camp and would soon be stiff and dead," he tries to remove his head from this gloomy idea by sprinting down the trail in a desperate attempt to pump blood through his extremities “He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.” Fear had become his final terrible mistake, according to the quote The man wishes to live longer in order to reach the camp As a result, the author makes the man sprint across the snow This point demonstrates to the readers that the man has gone insane and could have done anything to get to the camp Readers will be able to see through his despondency and desperation This detail conveys to the readers the fear of death When the man decides to stop running and simply wait for death, it indicates that he is exhausted and dissatisfied with himself In this story, the man is depicted as a calm steadiness at first; yet eventually becomes a frightened fight His fleeting aspirations are dashed when he fails to save himself The brief explanations of the harsh weather, as well as the man's eventual hypothermic death at the conclusion, create an ominous atmosphere VII THEME (Lê Thị Hồng Nhiên) 17 ● Theme 1: Neither natural instinct nor scientific knowledge are less necessary in human beings’ survival ● Theme 2: People have to be aware of the limit of individualism to respect nature and old-timer’s advice ● Issue: the power of nature, human skill, limitation of human beings, persistence, pride, There are two main themes that can be withdrawn from the story “To Build a Fire”. The first one is “Neither natural instinct nor scientific knowledge are less necessary in human beings’ survival” To prove that concept, the author discussed two types of knowledge throughout the story: Instinctual knowledge and Scientific knowledge The first is associated with the dog and the second with the man These two figures represent a larger distinction between nature and humans The dog could not understand or reason, but its instincts direct its survival However, when the dog got cold or its legs turn ice, it still depends on the man’s knowledge: “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” The man, on the other hand, relies on information gained from others, on logic, and on tools and technologies (matches and a knife) This scientific or rational knowledge clouds the man’s instinctual knowledge, and gives him confidence in his ability to protect himself from the natural elements with the resource of fire Therefore, he ignores the dog’s instinctual knowledge that the weather is too cold to safely travel In this way, the man is presented as separate from nature, and distant from his biological instinct for survival, because he understands the world scientifically rather than instinctually Ultimately, he had to accept the death The matter here is that either natural instinct or scientific knowledge is not enough Both must be complementary to each other in the existence of humans The second theme is: “People have to be aware of the limit of individualism to respect nature and old-timer’s advice” Arrogance and carelessness was the man’s attitude towards nature’s power and the old-timer’s advice A few hours into his trip, when he could easily 18 turn back, the man realized it is even colder than fifty below “But the temperature did not matter” Obviously, the temperature matters a great deal His overconfidence blinds him to the danger it represents A little earlier the narrator states of the extreme cold, “It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty” Pride warps his perception of his strength He feels equal to this harsh environment In contrast, the husky’s instinct is unclouded by pride While the man feels confident, the husky “was depressed by the tremendous cold It knew that it was no time for traveling” Early on the dog walks “with a tail drooping discouragement”. Even with its natural protection from the elements and superior foot speed, the husky knows they shouldn’t be traveling Besides that, his treatment of his dog serves to emphasize a desire to control nature For instance, “suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front The dog did not want to go It back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface”; “On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man The one was the toilslave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whiplash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash”; or he thought “He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them” However, the dog won He could not kill the dog, but he died while the dog survived From that, we can conclude that what ever humans and whoever they are, they still live under nature’s mercy On the other point of view, to the old-timer’s advice, the man remained ignore until he was in the edge of the death The previous autumn the man was warned by an old-timer not to travel alone at below fifty degrees Rather than preventing the man from making this trip, he set out anyway After soaking his feet, he recalls this advice and thinks, “Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them…Any man who was a man could travel alone” As a newcomer to the area, the man was described as having very little knowledge and no experience of surviving such cold temperatures and yet he chose to travel alone despite what he had been told His lack of foresight and imagination was elemental to the arrogance on display The man’s pride was deep-seated After the falling snow puts out his fire and his feet and hands were freezing, he thought “Perhaps the oldtimer from Sulphur Creek was right” This close to death, he still did not admit unequivocally, even to himself, that he was wrong 19 In summary, the two themes illustrated throughout the story help the readers fully understand the conflicts and solutions of the story and appreciate the story because they express the message that the writer is trying to convey VIII POINT OF VIEW (Huỳnh Mỹ Quyên) In "To Build a Fire", Jack London uses the third-person objective point of view The narrator does not participate in the story or become any of the characters However, he can describe the characters’ actions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as the scenery around them He tells the readers all the things that he sees and hears We can know that by the way Jack London calls the man "he" from the beginning of the story, "when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank." After that, until the end of his work, Jack London still uses the pronoun "he" More specifically, this is the omniscient point of view The author knows all about his characters, then jumps into their heads Not only showing the man’s mind, but also the dog’s, "The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold It knew that it was no time for traveling Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment." If the author chooses another point of view, the story will have a completely different feeling from this one The readers might sympathize with the man, which will affect the contrast between his persistence and the strength of the natural world Instead, Jack London wants us to acknowledge him as an idiot Besides, this is the only point of view that can emphasize the difference between the man's and the dog’s responses to the cold weather "This man did not know cold Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold." The man chooses to fight the cold, while the dog’s instinct prevents it from continuing walking Protecting itself is the most important thing 20