Klondike Gold Rush

In Jack London’s “To build a fire” a man is faced with a challenge like no other. A man paired with only a dog and the gear he can carry on his back, struts far from the path to seek his own adventure. However, this leads him to an unfortunate fate. Nature is our protagonist’s main conflict. The central theme is man versus nature as seen throughout the story. An example would be shown in the following quote from the story “He felt the ice move under his feet. He had also heard the…

In To Build a Fire by Jack London, London was trying to portray a conflict between youth and arrogance as opposed to wisdom and experience. The main character is a young man who believes that he knows the frozen wilderness, but he is still a newcomer who has not yet learned to respect the power of nature. London shows early in the story that the young man lacks imagination, an asset he sorely needs when tested to the extreme by the harsh wilderness. The man’s egotism and greed are in conflict…

The novel White Fang, written by Jack London, is a historical fiction story following a number of characters through the hardships of the fight for gold in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the 1890s. The story is told in third person omniscient, following a select few characters as the story goes on, but mostly focusing on a young cub. He is the last surviving of his famine-stricken litter of pups, and who is later on named White Fang. We adventure with the brave White Fang as he learns the…

The Call of the Wild is a gruesome story written by Jack London. The book has been made into a movie directed by Peter Svatek. Though the book and movie are very much alike, the scene where Buck pulls 1000 pounds has small differences that make a huge impact on the reader. The scene also illustrates a difference in the character of John Thornton and how he reacts to winning the bet. In the book, when Buck pulls 1000 pounds, John Thornton curses him with a strong sense of compassion and…

A fierce green fire coming from a wolf’s eyes. When I first read this piece by Aldo Leopold, I interpreted the “fierce green fire” as something that the wolf felt. I saw this fire as pain and anger. To me, the pain and anger was so strong, that it was felt and seen as a “fierce green fire.” However, when analyzing further into the reading, I understood the “fierce green fire” as a will to live. The situation that the wolf was in was one of stress, danger, anger and probably confusion. I think…

Maycomb endures the coldest winter in a very long time and everyone was doing what they could to stay warm. Atticus said “...the temperature registered sixteen, that it was the coldest night in his memory, and that our snowman outside was frozen solid” (91). Everybody bundled up and kept their fireplaces and stoves going in every room that had one. Late at night, Atticus woke up Jem and Scout to get them outside to see that Miss Maudie’s house is in flames. Scout and Jem stood down by the Radley…

In the versions of, “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the text is a more realistic representation of the man’s struggle for survival. When the man is drowsing off into a death of freezing, the narrator describes what the man is feeling in that moment. “Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known” (London, page 12). In the text the reader can better understand this moment of death then in the film because in the story he does die…

surroundings of the protagonists; The harsh cold, or the threatening jungle. Jack London based his writing on the 1896 Yukon Gold Rush, which was a mass migration to Canada and Alaska. The main character in the story is described as a “newcomer” and is in search of his friends in a mining camp, which alludes to the fact that this man is a migrant on his way to mine for gold. In Connell’s narrative, it was written in 1924 around the time of the…

London uses a diverse amount of literary techniques like figurative language and metaphors to portray how Buck overcomes challenges of the snowy northern regions. Near the conclusion of the novella Buck becomes a beast and is the king once again. The novel The Call of the Wild helps us to realise how easy it is for someone to change character and mind set. It also helps the reader to understand that there is a beast inside all of us and we can choose to show it or not and to be…

THE POWER OF INSTINCT The Call of the Wild a dog story, Buck a splendid California ranch dog. He was stolen and sold into Alaska, to become a sled-dog in the gold rush. “In the primitive” he quickly learns “the law of club and fang” jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. His first experience on the Alaskan coast brings home the nature of the eternal struggle. A friendly dog was knocked down in a fight and instantly “she was buried screaming with…