Death In Stephen Hawking's To Build A Fire

One reason the main character died is because he did not follow the trait of perception. In his crisis, he did not realize the severity of his situation. First, he does not realize the implications of how cold it is. The bitter cold meant nothing more to him than fifty degrees below zero (London 78). He never realized until body parts were numb that the cold was dangerous. Also, he had ignored the advice from an old-timer he had met at Sulfur Creek: “No man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below,” (London 85). The man, instead of going with someone, idiotically left his group of friends to see if he could profit from logging in the Yukon (London 78). Finally, after not seeing any harbingers of springs for half an hour, he suddenly falls in a hole (London 83). Perhaps he became careless and did not notice his own doom, as evidenced by how London wrote that everything seemed to be safe (London 83). Of course, he should
For the man in “To Build a Fire”, an active mind is a commodity he does not own. First, he has no imagination and fails to see the greater significances in minute details. As aforementioned, the cold was nothing but cold for the man; “That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head” (London 78). This here-and-now objectivity explains the surprise the man receives from the realization of his numb extremities. Furthermore, London implicitly states that the man had “never given much to thinking” and was even empty of thoughts (London 80). There are no examples of the man using any of the suggestions in Gonzalez’s article, such as singing a few tunes or reciting poetry (Gonzalez 97). Gonzalez would likely agree that if the man had given himself to the humanities, he would have a higher probability of beating the wicked Mother