Jack London's "To Build a Fire"

Write a paragraph about the setting. Try to explain the time and place as if you were explaining them to someone who had not read the story.  

The setting in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” takes place in Canada’s Yukon territory in the freezing temperature of at least “fifty degrees below zero” (107) in the Klondikes. The narrator is on a trail towards his destination Henderson creek. At first the narrator isn’t afraid of the freezing temperatures because he is “without imagination” (107) and instead of concentrating on the temperature, he would focus on the facts about the temperature. But then he begins to feel the numbness overcome his body and he begins to get fearful. The weather in this story plays a significant role because the whole story seems to revolve around the setting.  Everything is about the narrator and his Husky’s challenges with this overpowering weather.  

While reading the story I imagined the setting to look a little something like this because London made it known that the sky was “cold and gray” ( 106) although he mentions the day to be clear, there was still “no cloud in the sky” (106).

Later down the trail the narrator comes across a “frozen bed of a small stream” which the narrator knows to be Henderson Creek.

A scene in the story that stood out to me was when the narrator sat down on a snowy log to eat his lunch. I think the reason why this stood out to me was because the narrator had nothing but his dog and his biscuits to eat.

The narrator stops and makes a fire where the dog and him stop to relax. His fire is run by "a supply of seasoned twigs" (111) where he stops to rest and thaw "the ice from his face" (111). 

 

Here is a pile of snow by what appears to be a tree. Towards the end of the story, the narraor made the "wise" decision of making a fire by a tree which he later discovers was a huge mistake since all the snow from the tree "descended without warning upon the man and the fire" (113).

Even though I saw this story as being repetative with the setting, once I put myself in the narrator's shoes it became more intense. I can definitley see why this is one of Jack London's most famous short stories.