Innocent Nature Turned Destructive
As the fire rages on it quickly engulfs everything in its path and swallows its victims whole. As it started it was just an innocent, life providing element that turns the cold air to warmth. However when used improperly it can become an operator of devastating destruction. Just as the fire can do so can our egos. Through the short story To Build a Fire Jack London expresses his belief that the demise of mankind is directly related to the acquired ignorance of experience and the loss of necessary instincts through such disregarding, which may lead to complete self destruction.
Although the short story has a simple plot, it is able to convey a strong message of how overpowering our egos can become. Jack London is able to slowly tick away at the stages of how the every man is able to develop that ego and ignorance for things around him. The man devised by London for the purpose of this story took his ignorance to the extreme. The trouble began as he refused to reference a thermometer in order to calculate the outside temperature the best. Even though it may seem as if this is a simple innocent mistake, it is much different because, “In reality it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero”. This slight ignorance to his surroundings sent the man into a dangerous situation. He did all this with knowledge passed on to him, by and elder, that you were not to go out in weather sub 50 alone. Yet his ego kept him from listening to that as well. As his confidence grew in himself the danger become more imminent by each step that he took in the wilderness. Although not a person, he did travel with a dog however. The difference is that dog was still hardly removed from being a wolf and therefore was equipped for the cold. On the other hand, “This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. Due to the ignorant egotistical behavior of the man he became too frozen to even create a fire to warm himself and suffered the ultimate consequence of death in the desolate, frozen wilderness. The development of his ignorance started much before his culminating adventure, just as we are building ours every day. He felt superior, as if he was indestructible and unbreakable. Such thoughts can so easily cause harm and destruction with the swift power of a seemingly innocent fire.
cool :p
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