To build a fire
Human history is littered with example where a few individual risked life and limbs to venture into the unknown, which then came to be discovered, thanks to their spirit of adventurism or as some would say, fool hardy bravado. Ofcourse, certain names come to mind, Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, Lois and Clark etc. There is another side to this tale of fame as well. Even the success stories sometimes had a ring of failure about itself. A person might be a pioneer in the field of discovery but the fruits of his labor are enjoyed by those who follow him. He might in fact have served as an expendable instrument in the road to discovery, in the big schemes of things. Little do we know about the glaring failures of those who dared to and never lived to tell the tale of their supposed glory. The arctic and the Northern Alaskan territory presented similar challenges to the human spirit of the adventurism and discovery. The element of nature, the unfamiliar terrain, the extreme weather and unforeseeable circumstances all stacked up as worthy obstacles in the way of anyone who dared to explore its secrets and expansiveness, and fostered and thought of overcoming these. In the text under discussion, "To build a fire" by Jack Lon
don, the struggle between nature and man exemplifies the difficulties in the quest for adventurism whereby it can be said that much of what was discovered, what was new, came about through struggle rather than co-operation. All of the above explained, have the cumulative effect of presenting a picture of a man might be a tough individual but not necessarily a prudent one. Thus hero has a fall from grace. Pride comes before a fall is no longer a metaphor. The nature asserts itself on the man who struggled for all that was worth but had to bow to the verdict of the nature. This is the next step in this progression as he downgrades his options from losing limb to losing life. The same is re-iterated by the following (L37, P 1757).
Some common words found in the essay are:
L27 P1751, Jack London, L26 P1748, Lois Clark, Northern Alaskan, , L24 P1747, L39 P1747, L19 P1747, build fire, spirit adventurism, main character, extreme weather, verdict nature, jack london,
Approximate Word count = 845
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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