To Build A Fire Summary by Jack London

About the Author

Jack London, whose real name was John Griffith London, grew up on Oakland's waterfront. He was born in 1876 and left school at fourteen to work in a cannery. At 16, he was an oyster pirate and a San Francisco Bay Fish Patrol member. A few years later, he wrote about these experiences in The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902) and Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905). He went to Japan on a sealing cruise in 1893.

Upon returning home, he traveled across the country. His goal was to become a writer, so he read a lot. In 1897, he joined the Klondike gold rush after briefly studying at the University of California, Berkeley. A year later, he went back to San Francisco. In 1898 and 1899, the Overland Monthly and the Atlantic Monthly featured his Yukon-themed short tales. In 1900, The Son of the Wolf, his debut collection, was released, bringing him national recognition. He visited London in 1902 and researched the East End's slum living conditions. He described this occurrence in The People of the Abyss (1903).

He had a remarkable and intriguing life. There have been sailing voyages across Cape Horn and to the South Seas. For the Hearst newspaper, he wrote about the Russo-Japanese War and conducted lecture tours. He wrote many short tales and books due to his creative writing. He also wrote many collections of short tales, such as Love of Life (1907), Lost Face (1910), and On the Makaloa Mat (1919), in addition to two enlightening autobiographies, The Road (1907) and John Barleycorn (1913). The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), Before Adam (1907), The Iron Heel (1908), Martin Eden (1909), and The Star Rover (1915) are only a few of the works he published. 1916 Jack London passed away at his renowned Beauty Ranch in California.

Summary of the Story

The story begins in a cold, harsh environment where a man turns away from the frozen Yukon River and heads for the old Claim on Henderson Creek's left Fork. It was 9 o'clock, and the man was determined to reach there by 6 in the evening. Despite the man's resolve and confidence, the narrator conveys a sense of the vastness of the scene and the boundless expanse against which the man is placed, in which he is only a minute dot. All of this is meaningless to the man because, according to what we know about his character, he is just interested in the facts and ignorant of the effects of those facts. He is "quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in their significances."

The man is traveling alone, going disregarding the older man's advice. He only has one partner, a wolf-dog, and their bond is not one of love and trust but one of self-interest. The man shows no love towards the dog, which could be returned. The dog is the man's "toil slave", and the man is just another "fire provider" for the dog. After arriving at Henderson Creek at 10 a.m., he decides to go to Fork at noon and eat lunch there. When he hears the ice under him shatter at one point during his voyage, he shies away quickly "like a startled horse" since slipping into the water hidden behind the thin layer of ice may result in death by freezing. After sensing a similar trap, the man forces the dog to continue. The dog is hesitant to walk on, but the man forces him. The animal runs across the smooth, white surface before suddenly breaking through the ice and picking itself back up to escape danger. The dog starts licking the ice off its paw as the water on it instantly freezes. The two continue traveling. At twelve-thirty, they arrive at the Fork. The man chooses to eat but then realizes he must start a fire to defrost the ice muzzle that has grown over his mouth.

He sits down to enjoy his meal when the ice has melted. The dog spreads down close to the fire, "close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape being singed," as the man eats his lunch in the warmth of the fire. The dog clearly understands its limits, unlike a man. The dog seems a little uneasy as the man soon leaves again. However, because the two have little intimacy, it doesn't try to express concern to the man. There are no unusual happenings for about thirty minutes. Disaster strikes out of nowhere as the man slips through the thin ice and soaks himself halfway to his knees before he can pull himself out. He starts to light a little fire while shaking and having numb fingers since he knows the dangers a wet foot might bring. Finally, the man comes upon the trunks of a few tiny spruce trees and chooses to start a fire beneath one of them using a scrap of birch bark. A very small amount of flames are seen. But once again, disaster strikes unexpectedly: the branches of the tree beneath which he made the fire were heavily covered with snow, and every time he removed a twig, a faint disturbance reached the branches. It resulted in a horrific disaster that the man had not predicted. Then a hard struggle takes place to relight the fire again. He tried but failed to hit the match-sticks with his numb fingers. Then he tried to burn it by keeping the matches between his teeth. Despite his success in lighting the match, smoke enters his lungs, which causes him to cough spasmodically. The match sticks falls, and ends. He presses the matching bundle between his hands' heels and sets it on fire. But again, the fire devours the flesh and burns until it cannot survive. The birch bark finally burns despite the matches falling to the ground.

Then, with care, he adds additional twigs to the fire. But as the man tries to remove a huge piece of moss from the flickering fire, his shaking fingers accidentally stab the moss too deeply, causing the fire's core to get damaged and eventually extinguished. The man is now destined for death. In complete desperation, he stares at the dog and is reminded of another man who prevented himself from freezing by slaughtering a deer and burrowing it into its corpse. He now gets the cruel thought of murdering a dog and using its carcass as warmth. As he walks closer to the husky, the dog returns in fear. The man calls upon the dog with authority as he rises. After lunging toward the animal and attempting to grab it, he quickly realizes that his lifeless hands will not be able to kill it. After some time spent laying awkwardly next to the dog, the dog gets up and maintains his distance. Then, the man begins to experience real fear of dying. He struggles greatly to stand up and begin running, and blood circulation provides him with some warmth. However, he quickly runs out of energy and falls to the ground. This cycle is repeated until he cannot continue the effort any longer. He then dies with dignity and pictures how his friends would arrive to take his dead body away. He slowly slips into a deep sleep that will never end. For a while, the dog waits for the man to get up. As the sun sets, it approaches the man, detects the fragrance of death, and then departs. It then turns back and runs out toward the camp in search of other sources of food and fire.