Irony and Foreshadowing in To Build a Fire (Essay Sample)

Irony and Foreshadowing in To Build a Fire
Jack London’s story To Build a Fire has shaken the minds of audiences ever since its publication many years ago. A story that begins as an adventurous-looking tale quickly turns to danger and doom for the protagonist. It is necessary to examine London’s story to understand that the author used both irony and foreshadowing to hint at the man’s eventual fate, and that these literary devices help to strengthen the story, especially when it is read more than once.
The story starts out by informing the audience of the setting: “Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland” (London 47). ‘The man’ is the narrator and protagonist of this story, and he will never be named. London then describes the man (the protagonist), saying that the bitter cold and the general setting “made no impression on the man ... The trouble with him was that he … was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances” (London 48). This is the first instance where the audience begins to get to know the narrator, the (unnamed) man. The impression given is that the man thinks of facts, but not what those facts actually mean or how the facts should be applied to the decision-making process (he does not understand their “significances”). As one article says, “We realize almost immediately, the man has only a superficial knowledge of the Arctic. As he stands on a bank of the Yukon about to plunge into an almost absolute wilderness, and he has little or no understanding either of his immense isolation relative to his surroundings or of the extreme danger posed by the cold snap" (Pizer 220). When read for the first time, the reader may not pay too much attention to these little hints London provides, but upon a second or third reading, one would recognize that this is also the first instance of foreshadowing that is illustrated in the story. This is especially true as London comments that the fact that it is at least fifty degrees below zero, but says that this “did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold, nor did it lead him to ponder "The conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe” (London). The author is, at this instance, building suspense by foreshadowing a horrible event involving this man competing against nature itself. The suspense only builds as the story moves forward. Even the words used in the passages hint at doom: the ‘danger’ posed by the ‘cold’ … man’s ‘frailty’ as a creature (London). The author was careful and calculating about where he placed certain words so that they would have a foreshadowing quality to them within this story.
The man decides to take a treacherous shortcut in this bitterly cold weather in the Yukon, and he does this because he is looking forward to being alongside his friends soon enough. He plans to meet up with them, which the reader learns as the story says that “He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already ... He would be in to camp by six o’clock" (London). The man envisioned that when he met his buddies, "A fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready” (London). This is the first instance of irony, although it would not occur to a reader as such until his or her second reading. One would have to know the man’s ultimate fate in order to know that it contrasts painfully with his vision of being by a fire eating a hot supper by 6 that evening.
The next instances of foreshadowing and irony occur when the audience is told that the
man’s Husky “Was depressed by the tremendous cold” because the dog's natural instinct "Told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment” (London). London goes on to reveal that “In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero” (London). This is not so much foreshadowing as it is revealing about the present, or the current conditions the man is in. It is a key piece of information, though. Now the audience knows that the man already thinks he is battling a temperature of fifty below, but he is actually at odds with a much harsher seventy-five degrees below zero. There was, at that time, about “One hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained” on the terrain (London). Irony is all over this particular paragraph, as it is described how the dog knew better than the man about the danger this cold meant for them.
Moving forward, the man ends up getting his foot wet by accident. He knows he needs to make a fire, and do it quickly, or he might lose his foot, or even worse. He successfully builds a fire the first time. As one article published in Western American Literature points out, “Ironically, the traveler believes at one time during his journey that he has successfully gone against the old-timer's advice and has survived his solo journey through the white wilderness” (Bowen 288). The irony demonstrated at this point in the story is intensified when that first (and only) successful fire goes out due to snow from the tree branch above falling on it and extinguishing the fire. The man, at this point, is "Shocked" and "It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been”, and he contemplated to himself, thinking “If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no danger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to build the fire over again…” (London). The narrator knows he will, in the best-case scenario, “lose some toes”, and that he now only has one shot at getting this second fire going (London). His panic brings the irony to its peak as he realizes, "Perhaps the old-timer at Sulphur Creek was right” about the necessity of bringing along a trail mate (London).
As the audience who reads this story for a second, third or fourth time already knows, the man is entirely unsuccessful at starting the second fire. This is about where the first-time reader would begin to wonder if this man will possibly make it out of this place alive. The story goes on to say that the man “Thought in the moment of controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation” (London). After a futile attempt at lighting his last match with his bare hands, and a subsequent “wild idea” to slaughter his dog and use its body to keep warm, the narrator and protagonist realizes he is all out of ideas and attempts (London). The cold is setting in all over his weak, human body. This is when “A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes ... but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him” (London). Upon one’s first reading, this is presumably where in the story the reader would realize all the aforementioned instances of foreshadowing add up to this very moment. The man had become chillingly aware of his probable fate, and he now feels like a fool for not heeding the warning of the old-timer and taking a trailmate. In fact, he mutters his final words to this old man at Sulphur Creek, saying “You were right, old hoss; you were right," just before he “drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known” (London).
Upon the second reading of this story, or perhaps even the first when the reader reaches the conclusion, it becomes clear that the most effective irony in this story was a literary device called dramatic irony. It is present in a work of literature when “The audience’s or reader’s understanding of events