To Build a Fire

Close Reading Questions

1. What are the chief characteristics of the landscape in which the protagonist finds himself?
It is grey and extremely cold; note the repetition in the first sentence. It is strange: there is no sun on a
clear day. It is dark, gloomy, foreboding, and ominous. Excerpt 2 highlights the landscape’s vastness —
“a thousand miles… a thousand miles and half a thousand more” — and its desolation — “all pure white.”
It is mysterious and dangerously deceptive: its gentle undulations conceal the water that will later prove
fatal.

2. What foreshadowings does excerpt 1 include?

3. Excerpt 1 is written from the point of view of the omniscient narrator, excerpt 2 from that of the
protagonist. As such it records what he focuses on as he looks back over the path he has
travelled. What he picks out of the landscape is significant and, as we shall see, offers insight into
his perception of nature. What features does he note?
It is important to have students note the protagonist’s concentration on the Yukon River: its ice jams, its
twists and curves, and its relationship to the spruce-covered islands. Moreover, he places these details in
the context of distance to salt water and to cities.

The significance of these observations will become clear in the lesson’s analysis of excerpt 4, where we
learn that the protagonist is a would-be logger. As someone who hopes to cut timber on the islands, he is,
in excerpt 2, assessing the river’s capacity to carry logs to market. Thus here at the very opening of the
story the narrator suggests the protagonist’s utilitarian view of nature along with his obliviousness to the
danger posed by the desolate white landscape he is surveying. His perception of nature as a resource
blinds him to its power

Close Reading Questions

4. In the story’s opening paragraphs the narrator describes a landscape meant to impress, and he
seems to think that it should impress the protagonist. Why does he think that?
He thinks that the landscape should impress the protagonist because of its mystery and strangeness and
because its qualities are new to him; it’s his first experience with winter in the Yukon.

5. The landscape does not impress the protagonist. What does, and how does it impress him?
The cold impresses him, and it does so only to the extent that it makes him uncomfortable. He
experiences the world only on the level of the senses; he responds with no intellection.

6. What does the narrator mean when he says that the protagonist is “without imagination” and
that he is not alert to the “significances” of things?
The narrator is referring to an intellectual dullness, a pedestrian, matter-of-fact vision that never
transcends or inquires beyond the earthbound, the obvious, and the superficial. Later in the paragraph he
expands his critique to include a lack of self-awareness: the protagonist never contemplates matters like
human frailty, death, or his place in the universe. As we shall see, his ordeal leads him to contemplate all
of these matters.
7. Clearly, the narrator thinks that the protagonist’s response to the landscape is inadequate: “But
all this… made no impression.” In what ways is it inadequate?
The protagonist fails to recognize the mystery, strangeness, and danger in the landscape. For him nature
is nothing more than the cold.

8. The protagonist interprets the cold as merely something that causes discomfort, something to
be guarded against by bundling up. Had he been alert to “significances,” how might he have
interpreted the cold?
He might have seen it as a powerful force that could kill him. This misreading of the cold is emblematic of
his failure to give the natural world its due and to comprehend his precarious place in it, and that failure
sets him up for the tragedy that ensues.

Close Reading Questions

As we have seen thus far, the protagonist is incapable of reading the hints of danger and doom the
wilderness is sending him. But he is nonetheless capable of understanding the landscape in a particular
way.

9. In excerpt 4 we discover why the protagonist is trekking across the frigid Yukon: he is heading
for an old mining claim, but he has taken a roundabout way — a fatal choice, as it turns out — to
determine how he might move logs, cut in the area, to market. How does this fact explain the
landscape details he notes in excerpt 2?
Remind students of their responses to question 3. As we noted there, the protagonist is assessing the
river’s capacity to carry logs to market.

10. Excerpt 2, which is the second paragraph in the story, suggests how the protagonist perceives
nature. Excerpts 4, 5, and 6 tell us explicitly. In excerpt 4 we learn that he is a prospector and a
would-be logger. In 5 we learn that the dog is no pet: the man imperils the dog’s life by sending
him across dangerous ice. The description of the dog as a “toil-slave,” mastered through the
“whip-lash,” in excerpt 6 defines the relationship between the protagonist and the dog and, by
extension, between the protagonist and the natural world. Based on these passages, how would
you characterize the protagonist’s attitude toward nature?
He sees the natural world as a resource — a repository of gold and timber — to be exploited. Instead of
viewing nature as a living thing with its own power, deserving of respect, he sees it as a commodity to be
mined, cut, and sold. Furthermore, his treatment of the dog suggests that he views nature as something
that exists only to serve him, something he can control and dominate.

Close Reading Questions

Although we never see the old-timer from Sulfur Creek, he is a major character in the story. He appears
over and over again as the protagonist recalls the advice he gave him.

11. How is the protagonist’s attitude toward nature reflected in excerpt 7, and how does his
attitude help to explain his dismissal of the old-timer’s advice?
His satisfaction at saving himself reflects his belief that he can prevail over nature. Firmly believing that,
why should he listen to the “womanish” (note the gendering of weakness) advice of an old man?

12. From the advice he offers, what can we infer about the old-timer’s attitude toward nature?
Compare it to the protagonist’s.
He is an “old timer,” whose long experience has taught him to understand and respect the power of
nature. Unlike the protagonist, he is aware of human frailty and knows that the human control of nature
cannot be counted on, especially in extreme circumstances.

13. We began this analysis by noting that the protagonist lacked self-awareness. How might we
say that, through his ordeal, nature has brought him to self-awareness, has led him to see his
place in the universe?
In excerpt 8 we see that his ordeal has, quite literally, enabled him to envision his place in the universe,
which happens to be a snow bank in the Yukon on which he is sprawled, frozen to death.

14. The story ends with the juxtaposition of two images: the protagonist lying dead in the snow
and the old-timer comfortable in his cabin. How does the story judge the two attitudes toward
nature represented by these men?
Here is where we see that the story can be read as a cautionary tale. Clearly, by killing off the
prospector / potential logger as a result of his pedestrian, utilitarian concept of nature, it is warning against
reducing nature to a mere commodity. In addition, it dramatizes the folly of thinking that humans can
master the natural world. By picturing the old-timer puffing on his pipe in a warm, comfortable cabin, the
story illustrates the wisdom of a perception of nature informed by an awareness of and respect for its
power and mystery.