To Build a Fire

Jack London

mar 2023 · Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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To Build a Fire is a short story written by Jack London. This book was first published in Century Magazine in 1908. This anthologized masterpiece of London illustrates in graphic terms the futility of human efforts to conquer nature. The story is set in the Klondike in winter and it concerns a man who ignores warnings and attempts to travel a great distance in the extreme cold. Interestingly, even as his dog senses the folly of the journey, the man stubbornly continues to believe in his own infallibility.

After getting his feet wet, he is unable to build the crucial fire that might save his life. A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This means the man’s doom is sealed. For Jack London, his prose becomes a powerful vehicle for disseminating grim message.

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Jack London was an American novelist and short-story writer. He was one of the most extensively translated of American authors in the 20th century. London’s best-known works are: The Call of the Wild and White Fang. They depict elemental struggles for survival. In the beginning, the author set himself a daily schedule of producing sonnets, ballads, jokes, anecdotes, adventure stories, or horror stories.

His first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North, a collection of short stories, gained a wide audience. Later on, to compensate the urgency of writing for money, London wrote The Cruise of the Snark in 1911, describing his adventures. He also wrote two autobiographical novels of considerable interest: The Road and John Barleycorn. Other important novels are The Sea-Wolf and The Iron Heel.