Analysis Of Jack London's To Build A Fire And The Law Of Life
The Man vs Nature is a theme London uses in two of his stories, where his characters have to survive the hard weather conditions the Arctic landscape presents and most importantly, how to attempt to face death in extreme cases. In Jack London´s To Build a Fire and The Law of Life, the protagonists of the two stories develop a survival behavior that increases as we read, leaving the stories in suspense until the end.
To Build a Fire is settled in Yukon, the smallest and westernmost of Canada´s three federal territories. By the way the author describes the setting, the reader can tell it has a great impact on the story´s narrative; as time goes by, he/she is able to feel the same below freezing temperatures that the nameless man is going through: …show more content…
Grandfather, father and chief of an Eskimo tribe, is left to die in the cold weather because due to his blindness and limpness, is unable to complete the travel his tribe is about to make, in search of better animals to hunt and food to sustain the entire group. The tradition of leaving the sick elderly behind is very clear among the people, so when Sitcumtoha, Old Koskooh´s granddaughter, sees his indisposed grandfather she does not give it much importance because it is something usual to see for her. Koskooh´s son, is taking over his father´s place in the tribe and becoming the chief, and as his daughter, he doesn’t worry much about his dad; he left him some wood to start a fire but he knew he was leaving him to die. When the group leaves, he starts to realize that death is close now, and begins to visualize and remember periods of his life like all the starving seasons or the times were everything was going great. ´´There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty bellied to the fire, and let fall from their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when the Yukon ran wide open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers.´´ Now that he is old and an experienced person, he understands that he doesn’t mean anything compared to the Mother Nature´s will to end with every single living thing at some point of its
To Build a Fire is settled in Yukon, the smallest and westernmost of Canada´s three federal territories. By the way the author describes the setting, the reader can tell it has a great impact on the story´s narrative; as time goes by, he/she is able to feel the same below freezing temperatures that the nameless man is going through: …show more content…
Grandfather, father and chief of an Eskimo tribe, is left to die in the cold weather because due to his blindness and limpness, is unable to complete the travel his tribe is about to make, in search of better animals to hunt and food to sustain the entire group. The tradition of leaving the sick elderly behind is very clear among the people, so when Sitcumtoha, Old Koskooh´s granddaughter, sees his indisposed grandfather she does not give it much importance because it is something usual to see for her. Koskooh´s son, is taking over his father´s place in the tribe and becoming the chief, and as his daughter, he doesn’t worry much about his dad; he left him some wood to start a fire but he knew he was leaving him to die. When the group leaves, he starts to realize that death is close now, and begins to visualize and remember periods of his life like all the starving seasons or the times were everything was going great. ´´There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty bellied to the fire, and let fall from their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when the Yukon ran wide open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers.´´ Now that he is old and an experienced person, he understands that he doesn’t mean anything compared to the Mother Nature´s will to end with every single living thing at some point of its