Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” is an example of a naturalist short story. Naturalism was a movement in literature, which developed out of Realism. The main goal of the late nineteenth-century American Naturalists was not to show the overwhelming and oppressive reality of the material forces present in our lives. Their attempt, rather, was to represent the intermingling in life of controlling forces and individual worth. The Naturalists do not deprive man of human qualities. The general idea of a naturalistic character is that they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, chance, or instinct; but they have compensated in humanistic values which have established their individuality and life, their struggle for life becomes impressive and they maintain human dignity. The title “To Build a Fire” tells you a lot about itself and its Naturalistic background. You may even think it sounds like an instruction manual. London’s story gives us one of the oldest disagreements in literature and life: man versus nature. In Naturalism, characters do not have freewill; external and internal forces, environment, or heredity controls their behavior. This belief is called determinism. All determinist believe in the existence of the will, but the will is often enslaved on account of different reasons. In “To Build a Fire,” the man who you can tell is new to the area is cognizant of the facts but is unable to see the significance of what the facts mean. The man lacks imagination, the ability to connect the dots and it ultimately leads to his demise. This may seem like he is not intelligent, but what he really lacks is instinct.
Jack London begins the story with a description of what the day looks like. He continues with “it was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun.” (London 1) He observed the empty, silent, far reaching hair-line trail, the no sun...