“To Build a Fire” (link) by Jack London is a great example of London’s dark, transcendentalist style; the elements of the story and careful diction all lead to a portrayal of the philosophy that nature is a harsh mistress and life is harsher still.
One of London’s prominent strategies in this short story is his descriptions of the landscape. London characterizes the scene as “exceedingly cold and grey” which leads straight into the idea that this will be a less than happy story. Within this first paragraph London goes on to mention that “There was no sun nor any hint of sun”. The sun typically signifies life and warmth, and is an indicator of the start of a new day. But instead of this new beginning the main character, a first time Yukon traveler, is greeted by darkness and grey. These will help set the tone for the events that soon unfold for the novice wanderer.
An equally integral part of the narrative is the “big native husky” that follows the man around. This dog is used as a symbol for everything that the inexperienced traveller is not. The traveller believed that the temperature did not matter, that he was a man and he could brave the 50 below 0 weather, when the sad truth is that he could not. The dog on the other hand has the natural instinct of an animal, it knows “a truer tale than was told by the man’s judgement.” In the end it is easily seen that the man’s poor judgement and choices led him to his death, while the natural instincts of the dog kept him alive. A prominent example of this is the difference in how they each respectively handled getting wet in the freezing weather. When the dog falls through some ice into the cold water he immediately makes the effort “to lick the ice off it’s legs” because it “was a matter of instinct”. The dog is able to survive his brief stint with the water. On the other hand though the man’s own fall through the ice is not so fortunate. After he falls through he makes a fire and warms himself, but he does not possess the same instinct and natural prowess that the dog does. No, instead he “built the fire under a spruce tree” which soon loosed it’s payload of snow and snuffed out the fire. In short the man did not survive his own encounter with the ice break. London introduces an interesting point in this story, that even though a man might be taught the essentials of survival in the woods and seem ready for everything, he can never be as prepared for nature as a creature of nature will be. The dog is part of that environment and because of that he is more knowing than the man, his survival is due to the fact that he realizes the harsh ways of the wild and dares not underestimate the dangerous of the world. The man tries to defy nature but nature is not so easily tricked