Unfortunately, his fire fails, and the man ends up freezing to death. Therefore, it does not attempt to help the man or express its misgivings about leaving the fire behind other than for its own survival. The characters in the story are used to keep the story going and help the author come across to his audience. He regains some hope of being able to run far enough to keep his feet from freezing, to reach the camp. He definitely doesn't belong there and is unfamiliar with the ferocity of the winters, but he will become acquainted quickly. The setting of the story in the extreme cold of the largely uninhabited Yukon establishes the thematic role nature will play from the beginning.
The old man at Sulphur Creek presents a different possibility for the relationship between humans and nature: one based on healthy fear and respect of the natural world. He is checking on some other prospects before meeting his friends at a mine. The boys the friends waiting in the camp : The boys have no particular character. According to , the hero goes on a journey by leaving the ordinary world and facing trials. Nature is indifferent to human kind. The faintness of the last sled-trail in the snow indicates no one has been by in a month, but the man pays it no mind; still, he occasionally thinks that it is very cold, and automatically and unsuccessfully rubs his cheekbones and nose to warm them. Once it is clear the man is dead, the dog takes off.
The man did not pet the dog or treat it fondly. His mission was to get back to Henderson Creek, without being frozen to death. There is no indication of when the story was taking place. Unfortunately, that fire is built below a Spruce tree. These unexpected places of moving water present a very serious danger because breaking through the snow and ice to one of these streams could cause the man to get very wet. The Yukon A the time that London wrote his story, the Yukon was still mostly uninhabited, but a great number of men were racing there due to the discovery of gold.
This quality of good sense, which the dog acquires, allows it to away from the same fate of the man. With wet feet, his time in such a cold temperature is precious. The man removes his mittens to pile the sticks and light the fire and his fingers quickly grow numb. Still, it follows the man. The cold does more than create frost and ice on his face. Otherwise, he would inevitably die.
This arrogance results in the protagonist putting himself in a dangerous situation that was preventable. However, London depicts the death quite differently than many other authors do. The man is not intelligent, despite being practical and resourceful. From a literary standpoint, this type of setting indicates depression or an omen of doom. The short story depicts the protagonist's battle of life and death while highlighting the importance of the fire.
It is evident that he believed that these newcomers were too inexperienced and blinded by gold fever to survive the trip. See, I told you all you have to do is make copies and let your expertise take care of the rest. He begins to admit that the old man was right and that the situation is extremely serious. Characters The man: The character of the man is confidently stubborn because he ignores a piece of advice from the old-timer. As the dog reluctantly follows the man across a frozen river, the dog is more cautious than the man. He is here encroaching where he doesn't belong, yet the man doesn't care. The dog looks to the man as the source of fire, and it desires that protective warmth.
The gloominess of the setting instills feelings in the man and the dog, of a constant battle with this world of depression they are in. The whiteness of the land, covered in ice and snow, is broken only by the trail which leads 500 miles south and 1,500 north all the way to the Bering Sea. He is blinded by fear greater than anything he has ever experienced. In the opening paragraph London presents us with a scene that is gloomy, depressing, and ominous, these elements foreshadow an outcome that will be fatal to our protagonist. Before the man made his journey, an old-timer reminded that under no circumstance should one go to Yukon.
Finally he tries to restore his circulation by running toward the camp, but stumbles and falls in the snow. The amount of constant detail the story holds allows the reader to anticipate the ending that is inevitable to happen. Therefore, any kind of correction is warmly welcome. He could find himself being surrounded by his friends from mining camp. He merely conveys the objective facts, pessimistic though they may be about the man.
I think it is strange how in this story we only meet one person and a dog and the author keeps the details about these characters very open. He made a choice of ignoring the weather warnings, which evidenced danger in his journey. This instinctual flaw in mankind relative to that of a husky is a given, but the man fails to compensate by integrating intellectuality into his journey. The dog: The dog is quite faithful to the man because he accompanies the man to travel in Yukon in spite of the danger. This shows more fully the betrayal of his body, which cannot carry out the commands of his mind or use the man-made resources, like a knife, that he has relied on.