Analyse af Jack Londons 'To Build a Fire'

To build a fire is a short story from 1908, written by Jack London. The story is about a man, who walks with a dog, in the northwestern territory Yukon. He traveled to a camp, in tough weather with a temperature of “Fifty degrees below zero”(p.137) but the long cold way to the camp resulted in him never emerging. I will focus on the man against the nature, which Jack London is known for and what the dog means for the man.

In this story, an omniscient narrator is used. This narrator has a full overview of both the characters and the setting.

The narrator that we have in this story says something directly to us as readers as how we are to perceive this main character and view him. “The mysterious, far-reaching har-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all - made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination”. (s. 137) So from this bit of text, you as a reader believe in the man, and are regarded as a sympathetic character, because he is a newcomer, so he may not be that experienced to the surroundings he finds himself in. Another thing it says it’s the trouble with him, he’s without imagination, here it’s a negative expression.