TO BUILD A FIRE by Jack London (1908)

Jack London gifts us with this tragic story of a man foolish enough to travel without any other human companion through a sub-zero blizzard. The protagonist has only his Husky dog to keep him company; without much use for the man as we learn at the end of the story. It is early morning when the story begins and there is no visibility of the sun that makes the day seem very gloomy. The man is traveling along a creek which has been completely frozen and covered with ice and snow. All the man can see is white snow all around him covering up every tree and bush along the creek. Although we learn from the narration that it is 9 in the morning at the beginning of the story, 12:30 when the man makes his first stop for lunch, and early afternoon when the tragic event that sentenced him to death occurs; time seems to be paused as there doesn't appear to be a change in the sky since it always looked gloomy, sunless and gray.

This image almost exactly resembles the image painted in my head of the environment around the man. "...But he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek" (109).

This image is even better than the preceding one since almost every branch of tree is covered in white snow as the story suggests. This image paints a freezing environment where one has to be careful if traveling through it.

The small snow deposits that have formed on the small creek here suggest a freezing temperature. "They hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet" (109). To me, the uncertainty of ice and snow forming on the creek is best reflected with this snowy image.

Although there is no creek visible here, this image reminds me of the story because there is a thick blanket of snow all around and makes visibility a little harder. At plain sight, I wouldn't be sure if at the end was a cabin or just more and more snow.

This image is perfect because it reminds me of the passage where the man has his first emergency fire put out by the balls of snow built up on the branches of the tree he was under of. "Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted" (113).