To Build a Fire by Jack London (Pdf+Summary)

To Build a Fire Pdfby Jack London is a short story about an unnamed male protagonist who embarks out in the subzero boreal forest of the Yukon Territory, followed by a native dog, and is on the way to visit his friends while ignoring warnings about the risks of hiking alone in severe cold. The protagonist underrates the harsh conditions and gradually freezes to death.

There are two versions of this short story; the first one was published in 1902, while the more popular version was published in 1908, often regarded as anthologized classics. The summary of this short story is shared below:

To Build A Fire Summary

This Pdf book of the short story follows an unnamed man’s journey through the forests bordering the Yukon River on a winter day with extremely freezing weather while ignoring warnings against traveling alone in such conditions. He is accompanied only by a large husky dog.

The animal’s intuitions warn it about the risks of the extreme cold, but the dog reluctantly tracks the man. As they pursue the course of a frozen creek, the man is attentive to avoid patches of thin ice hidden by the snow. His objective is to reach a group of prospectors at their camp by evening.

At half-past noon, the man builds a fire to warm up and eat lunch. Shortly after continuing his hike, he accidentally smashes through the ice and soaks his feet and lower legs, causing him to halt and build another fire so he can dry himself.

Having picked a spot under a tree for this fire, he drags twigs from the brush pile around it to provide the flames; the pulses of this action eventually cause a large amount of snow to tumble down from the branches aloft and extinguish the fire.

The man quickly starts to lose sensation in his extremities and hurries to light another fire, now beginning to understand the cautions about the life-threatening danger posed by the extreme cold.

He ignites the fire, igniting all of his matches and burning himself in the procedure due to the numbness in his hands. While trying to pull a piece of moss from the fire, he inadvertently prompts the burning twigs apart, extinguishing them.

With no way to start another fire, the man feels like killing the dog and using its body heat to protect himself, but his hands are so inflexible that he can neither choke the animal nor draw his knife to cut its throat.

Finally, he tries to mend his circulation by running toward the camp but slips and falls numerous times in the snow.

The man feels the cold slowly freezing him to his core, and he falls asleep and dies of hypothermia. He visualizes himself standing with “the boys” as they discover his body.

After dark, the dog leaves the body to find food and shelter at the camp.

Download To Build A Fire Pdf

Get the Pdf book of this popular short story by Jack London about the journey of a man in extremely harsh weather along with a dog.

It is regarded as one of the best short stories of all time.

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Additional Information

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