To Build a Fire

“North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island.”

The setting is established as sparse and remote. The land ahead will offer no amenities or human companionship. Still, there is a calm beauty in the spruce trees and unbroken snow, which contrasts the frenzied struggle against nature that soon follows. In the distance, the man can still see the main trail, but he is unmoved by it. This highlight’s the man’s stoic nature, as well as his assumption that he will reach camp that evening and again be among fellow prospectors.

“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.