To Build a Fire

“Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe.”

The man is portrayed as simple-minded, if not arrogant. These are characteristics that contribute to his struggles and, ultimately, his death. Had he been more aware of his own vulnerabilities, he likely would not have set out alone, and would have probably survived.

“The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment.”

In such harsh conditions, animal instinct is more trustworthy than human reasoning. Here, it’s ironic that the dog is following the man when the man could have avoided danger by following the dog’s lead. In this passage, there is a shift in point of view. By using the dog’s perspective, the story’s POV gains omniscience. This perspective shift is useful because the dog’s trustworthy instinct is juxtaposed against the man’s poor judgment.

“He was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o’clock he would be in camp with the boys.”

This passage presents a lull before the man’s struggle for his life. Rather than respect the deadliness of his surroundings, he arrogantly carries forward, thinking only about his upcoming respites. The artificialness of time measurement exemplifies his flawed belief that he is dominant over nature.

“He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin. And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger.”

This foreshadows the incident that leads to the man’s death. His acknowledgment of danger is the first sign that he is considering his own mortality. This increases the tension as the story starts to build toward its climactic scene.

“On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash. So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire.”

In this harsh environment, altruism is absent. It is in self-interest that the man and the dog keep each other’s company. The relationship is heartlessly mutualistic. Though the man holds greater power in the relationship, he is the one that dies, suggesting that his domineering mentality contributes to his fatal arrogance.

“He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This was imperative at that low temperature—he knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed.”

When the man steps through the ice, the event occurs that sends the story toward its tragic climax. The man had arrogantly assumed that he could easily traverse this harsh landscape without the company of other prospectors. Here, he begins to worry, which heightens the story’s tension.

“So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze.”

The man has begun the descent toward death. Because he has built a fire, he doesn’t yet fully realize the danger he is in. His arrogance still leads him to believe that he is safe. However, his body is displaying the symptoms that will soon overtake him.

“The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.”

After starting the fire to dry out his feet, the man mistakenly believes he has saved himself. His conceitedness compels him to believe that he is tougher than those who have more experience in such expeditions. Though he doesn’t realize it, this self-absorption has already started to kill him.

“It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no danger now.”

For the first time, the man shows humility. In a display of self-awareness, he second-guesses himself. However, this shift in consciousness comes too late, as he is already well on his way to his death. Though he will not live much longer, this passage does indicate a degree of character growth.

“And the man, as he beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.”

The man struggles to regain feeling in his extremities while the dog remains physically well. Their relationship to nature differs. While the dog is a part of it, the man tries to conquer it. This speaks to a thematic element of the story: man’s attempt to conquer nature. Here, it is clear that—despite the man’s earlier arrogance—nature is not easily conquerable.

“But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal.”

It is not out of compassion that the man spares the dog. Rather, he has been rendered physically defeated by nature. A short time earlier, he’d scoffed at the thought of the old man’s advice about traversing this wilderness without a partner. Now, he is incapable of basic movement. In this harsh landscape, nature—rather than man—dictates who lives and who dies.

“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 threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail.”

A wave of self-awareness washes over the man. In response, he acts instinctually by running up the trail. This is ironic in that he has seemingly considered himself superior to the dog because he relies on reason rather than instinct. However, it is instinct that is keeping the dog alive. For the man, his flawed reasoning has now led to his inability to survive on instinct.

“And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.”

The reality of the man’s death is taking hold, and his hope is becoming denial. Now he is not only fighting against his physical degradation, but also against his psychological state. It is all wearing him down as he descends toward his imminent death.