To Build A Fire, By Jack London

As the chilled winter snow stretches miles past the destination of the left fork of Henderson Creek, the protagonist’s body feels numb from head to toe. The man and his dog walk miles in the bitter cold trying to stay alive. Walking aside from the main Yukon trail in the cold winter midday, without the sun beating down giving the protagonist heat, he feels frozen as if he has not seen the sun in days. Jack London, the author of To Build A Fire, goes into immense detail throughout the story to draw his readers into the setting of the crisp winter chill. London’s vast description of the environment allows his readers to picture every single object throughout the mountains as if the reader was experiencing the exact situation. As the protagonist travels miles to reach his destination where his friends await him with food and fires, the setting intensifies the man’s conflicts and influences making the journey longer.
As the snow accumulated, the protagonist noticed no man had come up or down that silent creek in a month. Although, the man pushed on. The protagonist, traveling next to the stream, must watch out for springs of water that are not frozen yet. If skeptical of spring waters, the protagonist would make the dog go ahead to test the ice. However, the man saw no sign of springs for a half of an hour and then out of nowhere, he falls in water and halfway up his knee is frozen. The setting of the cold spring water froze his leg, which makes the man delay his journey by more than an hour because he must start a fire to