what role does nature play in to build a fire
Advisor: Jennifer Fleissner, Associate Professor of English language, Indiana University; National Humanities Middle Fellow
© 2016 National Humanities Center
How can we read "To Build a Fire" as a cautionary tale about the exploitation of nature?
Understanding
Jack London's story "To Build a Fire" warns not only against trekking through a wilderness at seventy-5 beneath simply also confronting seeing nature merely equally a resources to be exploited and controlled.
Jack London (1876–1916)
Text
Jack London, "To Build a Burn down," 1908
Text Type
Literary Fiction; Brusque Story
Text Complexity
Grades four–5 complexity band.
For more than information on text complexity come across these resource from achievethecore.org.
In the Text Analysis department, Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups, and Tier 3 words are explained in brackets.
Click hither for standards and skills for this lesson.
Ten
Common Cadre State Standards
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9–10.one (Cite evidence to support explicit and inferential references)
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9–x.two (Determine development of a theme over the course of a text…)
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.ix–10.three (Clarify how complex characters develop…)
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9–10.4 (Meaning of words and phrases… figurative and connotative…)
Teacher's Annotation
This lesson develops what might be called an environmentalist estimation of "To Build a Burn." The reading turns on the nameless protagonist'due south lack of imagination and his disability to answer to the natural world in anything more than superficial and utilitarian terms. In the first of the story the narrator describes a landscape that sends powerful signals of danger and doom, yet the protagonist, incapable of apprehending the "significances" of things, responds only to the cold, which he sees, not as something that could kill him, but simply as a source of discomfort. Despite being devoid of self-awareness and curiosity, however, he can read nature in a item fashion, equally a commodity, a source of gold and timber, to be exploited. His attitude toward nature is further defined by his relationship to the canis familiaris that accompanies him: the animal is his "toil-slave," dominated and controlled by the "whip-lash."
Having established the protagonist's attitude toward nature, the analysis turns to the "old-timer from Sulfur Creek," who, though unseen, is a major grapheme in the story. The lesson challenges students to infer the old-timer's mental attitude toward nature from the communication he offers and to compare information technology to the protagonist's view of the natural world. Noting the juxtaposition of images of the two men at the stop of the story — one dead on a snowfall banking concern, the other safe and warm in his cabin — the lesson asks which view of nature the story endorses.
The lesson develops this estimation by analyzing nine brief excerpts, covered through iv sets of close reading questions. It could be used in class past assigning ane group of students sets 1 and 2 and a second sets iii and iv.
The textual analysis does not explore the story's naturalistic elements, but the interactive exercise contrasts naturalism with romanticism and realism and asks students to identify passages every bit examples of each. It offers an splendid opportunity to assess students' agreement of naturalism and to review romanticism and realism. It is written so that it can be discrete from this lesson and used every bit a stand-alone practice.
The lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The teacher's guide includes a background note, the interactive practice described in a higher place, a text analysis with answers to close reading questions, and an optional follow-up assignment. The student version, an interactive PDF, includes all of the in a higher place, except for the answers to the shut reading questions and the follow-up assignment.
Teacher'southward Guide
Background
Background Questions
- What kind of text are we dealing with?
- When was it written?
- Who wrote it?
- For what audition was it intended?
- For what purpose was information technology written?
The discussion "pedestrian" has two meanings. Every bit a substantive, it denotes a person who is walking; as an adjective it means unimaginative. The protagonist of Jack London's short story "To Build a Burn down" dies considering both meanings utilize to him. A pedestrian accident — he steps into a spring when the temperature is lxx-five below — is the immediate crusade of his decease. His pedestrian intellect — he cannot grasp the "significances" of things — is the ultimate cause of his death. Focusing on the latter, this lesson explores how his lack of imagination leads to his demise.
Jack London (1876–1916) based "To Build a Fire" on his experience in the Klondike region of northwestern Canada. The discovery of gold there in 1896 prepare off a frenzy that led thousands of prospectors to claiming its harsh climate and terrain. In the late 1890s London'due south efforts to launch a writing career had stalled, and he yearned for an adventurous and perhaps lucrative escape from publishers and rejection letters. His brother-in-police force also dreamed of hitting it rich and agreed to finance an expedition that would take both of them to the gold fields. They left San Francisco on July 25, 1897. On the trip north they befriended three other prospectors, and the five decided to pool their talents. They arrived in Juneau, Alaska, on August two and set out for the Klondike. Afterward climbing mountains, shooting treacherous rapids, and enduring miserable living atmospheric condition, London and his companions set up camp almost Dawson City in October. While there he spent much of his fourth dimension in saloons listening to prospectors' alpine tales about living in the wilderness. A winter in shut quarters with four other men and a steady diet lacking fresh vegetables left him emotionally exhausted and suffering from scurvy. In June 1898 he started his journey dorsum to San Francisco, arriving there the following calendar month. He stepped off the boat with merely $iv.50 worth of gold grit1 but with a treasure of material that would fuel his imagination for years to come.
That treasure would have seemed like a paltry thing to the protagonist of "To Build a Fire." As the narrator points out, the "trouble" with "the human being" is that his thinking has remained resolutely earthbound. He has never launched himself into "the conjectural field" to contemplate such matters as human frailty, death, or his identify in the universe. Why does the narrator tell usa that? After all, how useful are deep thoughts when you are plodding through deep snow? Applied knowledge rather that philosophic speculation sustains the man through much of the story: he can, for example, navigate overland with impressive accuracy, and he tin can outset a burn in a fuel-starved surroundings with a single friction match. Had he avoided the accident, those skills, not musings about immortality, might take gotten him to the old claim, frostbitten, to be sure, but alive.
Mention of the one-time merits reminds u.s. that the protagonist is a prospector, and, every bit we learn, he hopes to become a logger as well. His perception of nature is equally utilitarian as the knowledge that almost gets him to that warm camp and dinner with the boys. He does not make it, nevertheless, and with his death the story argues that a commonsensical formulation of nature is not enough. The natural world, as nosotros meet, exacts a terrible cost on those who cannot recognize its power and mystery and who endeavor to reduce it to nothing more than an economic resources.
1 Andrew Sinclair, Jack: A Biography of Jack London (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 51.
Text Analysis
Part ane: The Yukon
Close Reading Questions
one. What are the primary characteristics of the landscape in which the protagonist finds himself?
It is greyness and extremely cold; note the repetition in the offset sentence. Information technology is strange: there is no sunday on a clear day. It is dark, gloomy, foreboding, and ominous. Excerpt 2 highlights the landscape's vastness — "a thousand miles… a thousand miles and one-half a k more" — and its desolation — "all pure white." It is mysterious and dangerously deceptive: its gentle undulations conceal the water that will later evidence fatal.
2. What foreshadowings does excerpt 1 include?
The protagonist finds himself winded when he climbs the earth-bank, foreshadowing his lack of endurance when, late in the story, he contemplates running to his destination. The word "pall" refers not merely to the overarching atmosphere of gloom but also to a shroud that covers a bury, foreshadowing his fate.
3. Excerpt 1 is written from the point of view of the omniscient narrator, excerpt 2 from that of the protagonist. Every bit such it records what he focuses on equally he looks back over the path he has travelled. What he picks out of the mural is pregnant and, as nosotros shall run into, offers insight into his perception of nature. What features does he notation?
It is important to have students notation the protagonist's concentration on the Yukon River: its ice jams, its twists and curves, and its human relationship to the spruce-covered islands. Moreover, he places these details in the context of distance to common salt water and to cities.
The significance of these observations volition get clear in the lesson's analysis of extract 4, where we learn that the protagonist is a would-exist logger. As someone who hopes to cut timber on the islands, he is, in excerpt 2, assessing the river's chapters to carry logs to market. Thus here at the very opening of the story the narrator suggests the protagonist'southward utilitarian view of nature along with his obliviousness to the danger posed by the desolate white landscape he is surveying. His perception of nature every bit a resource blinds him to its ability.
1. Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and greyness, when the human turned bated from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-banking concern, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat bandbox timberland. It was a steep depository financial institution, and he paused for breath at the summit, excusing the human action to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. In that location was no sun nor hint of dominicus, though there was not a deject in the sky. It was a clear mean solar day, and notwithstanding there seemed an intangible drape over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the solar day nighttime, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of lord's day. It had been days since he had seen the lord's day, and he knew that a few more than days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would but peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.
2. The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snowfall. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark pilus-line that curved and twisted from effectually the bandbox-covered isle to the southward, and that curved and twisted abroad into the due north, where it disappeared backside another bandbox-covered island. This dark pilus-line was the trail — the chief trail — that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and common salt water; and that led due north seventy miles to Dawson, and withal on to the north a 1000 miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Bounding main, a 1000 miles and half a thou more.
Part 2: The Human being's Response to the Yukon
Close Reading Questions
4. In the story's opening paragraphs the narrator describes a mural meant to impress, and he seems to think that it should impress the protagonist. Why does he retrieve that?
He thinks that the mural should impress the protagonist because of its mystery and strangeness and because its qualities are new to him; it's his first experience with winter in the Yukon.
5. The landscape does not impress the protagonist. What does, and how does it impress him?
The cold impresses him, and it does and so only to the extent that it makes him uncomfortable. He experiences the globe just on the level of the senses; he responds with no intellection.
six. What does the narrator mean when he says that the protagonist is "without imagination" and that he is not alert to the "significances" of things?
The narrator is referring to an intellectual dullness, a pedestrian, matter-of-fact vision that never transcends or inquires beyond the earthbound, the obvious, and the superficial. Later in the paragraph he expands his critique to include a lack of cocky-sensation: the protagonist never contemplates matters like human frailty, death, or his identify in the universe. As nosotros shall see, his ordeal leads him to contemplate all of these matters.
7. Clearly, the narrator thinks that the protagonist's response to the landscape is inadequate: "But all this… made no impression." In what ways is it inadequate?
The protagonist fails to recognize the mystery, strangeness, and danger in the landscape. For him nature is nothing more than the common cold.
8. The protagonist interprets the cold every bit merely something that causes discomfort, something to be guarded against by bundling up. Had he been alert to "significances," how might he have interpreted the common cold?
He might have seen it equally a powerful force that could kill him. This misreading of the cold is emblematic of his failure to requite the natural world its due and to cover his precarious place in it, and that failure sets him up for the tragedy that ensues.
3. But all this — the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of dominicus from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all — made no impression on the man. Information technology was not considering he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a cheechako, and this was his get-go winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. L degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as beingness cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a animate being of temperature, and upon man's frailty in full general, able merely to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from in that location on it did not pb him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees beneath aught was to him just precisely fifty degrees beneath zilch. That there should be anything more than to information technology than that was a thought that never entered his head.
…
Part iii: The Man'due south Attitude toward Nature
Close Reading Questions
As we take seen thus far, the protagonist is incapable of reading the hints of danger and doom the wilderness is sending him. But he is nonetheless capable of understanding the landscape in a item way.
9. In extract 4 we discover why the protagonist is trekking across the frigid Yukon: he is heading for an old mining merits, but he has taken a roundabout manner — a fatal choice, as it turns out — to determine how he might move logs, cut in the area, to market place. How does this fact explain the landscape details he notes in excerpt 2?
Remind students of their responses to question 3. Every bit nosotros noted in that location, the protagonist is assessing the river's capacity to comport logs to market.
10. Excerpt 2, which is the 2nd paragraph in the story, suggests how the protagonist perceives nature. Excerpts iv, 5, and 6 tell usa explicitly. In extract 4 we learn that he is a prospector and a would-be logger. In five we acquire that the canis familiaris is no pet: the man imperils the dog's life by sending him beyond dangerous ice. The description of the domestic dog as a "toil-slave," mastered through the "whip-lash," in extract 6 defines the relationship between the protagonist and the domestic dog and, past extension, between the protagonist and the natural world. Based on these passages, how would you narrate the protagonist's attitude toward nature?
He sees the natural globe as a resource — a repository of gold and timber — to exist exploited. Instead of viewing nature every bit a living matter with its own power, deserving of respect, he sees information technology as a commodity to be mined, cutting, and sold. Furthermore, his treatment of the dog suggests that he views nature equally something that exists just to serve him, something he can control and dominate.
4. Only the temperature did not matter. He was spring for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the dissever from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon.
…
5. Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger. One time again, notwithstanding, he had a close telephone call; and in one case, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not desire to go. It hung back until the man shoved it frontward, and and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got abroad to firmer ground.
…
6. [The dog knew] it was the time to prevarication snug in a pigsty in the snowfall and wait for a curtain of deject to be drawn across the face of outer infinite whence this cold came. 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 pharynx-sounds that threatened the whip-lash.
Part 4: The Man and the Old-Timer
Close Reading Questions
Although we never see the quondam-timer from Sulfur Creek, he is a major character in the story. He appears over and over once again equally the protagonist recalls the advice he gave him.
11. How is the protagonist's attitude toward nature reflected in extract seven, and how does his attitude help to explain his dismissal of the old-timer'south advice?
His satisfaction at saving himself reflects his conventionalities that he tin can prevail over nature. Firmly believing that, why should he listen to the "womanish" (note the gendering of weakness) advice of an quondam human being?
12. From the advice he offers, what tin we infer well-nigh the old-timer's mental attitude toward nature? Compare it to the protagonist'due south.
He is an "one-time timer," whose long feel has taught him to understand and respect the power of nature. Unlike the protagonist, he is aware of human frailty and knows that the human control of nature cannot be counted on, especially in extreme circumstances.
thirteen. Nosotros began this assay past noting that the protagonist lacked self-awareness. How might nosotros say that, through his ordeal, nature has brought him to self-awareness, has led him to run into his place in the universe?
In extract 8 nosotros see that his ordeal has, quite literally, enabled him to envision his place in the universe, which happens to be a snow bank in the Yukon on which he is sprawled, frozen to death.
fourteen. The story ends with the juxtaposition of two images: the protagonist lying expressionless in the snow and the old-timer comfortable in his cabin. How does the story judge the ii attitudes toward nature represented by these men?
Here is where we see that the story tin be read as a cautionary tale. Clearly, by killing off the prospector / potential logger as a upshot of his pedestrian, commonsensical concept of nature, it is warning against reducing nature to a mere commodity. In addition, it dramatizes the folly of thinking that humans can master the natural world. By picturing the old-timer puffing on his piping in a warm, comfortable cabin, the story illustrates the wisdom of a perception of nature informed by an awareness of and respect for its power and mystery.
7. He was prophylactic. He remembered the communication of the quondam-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying downwards the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after 50 below. Well, hither he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a human had to do was to go on his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.
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eight. So the thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must exist extending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to remember of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the idea asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild run forth the trail. Once he slowed downwardly to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itself made him run over again.
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9. He pictured the boys finding his trunk next twenty-four hour period. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And, still with them, he came around a plow in the trail and found himself lying in the snowfall. He did not vest with himself any more, for fifty-fifty and then he was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow. It certainly was cold, was his idea. When he got back to united states he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from this to a vision of the onetime-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
Follow-Upwardly Assignment
Like Jack London, Stephen Crane (1871–1900), the writer of the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, wrote in a naturalistic vein. In an untitled poem of only twenty-four words, reproduced below, he captured much of naturalism'south mental attitude toward the natural world and the place of humans inside information technology. Every bit either a written or give-and-take assignment — your teacher will determine which — describe how "To Build a Fire" reflects the attitudes expressed in Crane's poem.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Vocabulary Pop-Ups
- intangible: incapable of existence touched, not solid
- pall: gloomy temper
- undulations: hills
- conjectural: interpretative
Source: https://americainclass.org/to-build-a-fire-an-environmentalist-interpretation/
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