Introducing Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”
Some stories are landmark enough to be seen well and clearly without the need of external aids. Jack London’s signal fire story, “To Build a Fire,” is just such a work of art, and since the incremental brutality of the writing may, as it were, speak for itself, it might be interesting and worthwhile to spend a moment lingering not on the text of the story, per se, but on the subtext. 
Call this an invitation to read between the lines. 
On the heels of Manifest Destiny, a term coined in 1845 for the belief that the United States of America should continue its pattern of growth unimpeded from sea to shining sea, the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s cemented a version of the American Dream into public consciousness, where it has remained, more or less, ever since. As Americans, we believe we can strike it rich, that the quarry lies somewhere out west, in the frontier lands, and that in some sense, the ends will justify the means. It was a dream about growth (outwards and upwards), expansion into new territories, (since now we’ve found the Promised Land, the thinking goes, it’s only a matter of time before the world should yield all its riches to us). And so men and women headed to California, and north towards the Yukon territories, with a dream of mining America’s natural resources for the precious metals that many western settlers felt to be their birthright, if only they were brave and dogged enough to see the harrowing task of mining in the wild through to its completion. The competition was intense – as was the climate. 
Jack London’s unnamed protagonist in “To Build a Fire” embodies the spirit of this age. While exemplifying a certain spirit of romance for the age, he is in crucial ways an unfeeling man, and while the cold creeps into his body, causing it to malfunction and finally to break, he maintains only a dispassionate application of his “reason” to exercise his goals. We will see where this leads him. It’s uncharted territory, to be sure. 
For now, happy reading.
-Allen Guy Wilcox