Tommy Buri

The story of “To Build a Fire” by Jack London deals with a man who is traveling a dangerous trail called the Yukon trail. I looked up the trail’s name as the story gives it a snowy and steep mountain description, and the place is in British Columbia near Alaska. I could imagine the freezing temperatures there but as I read along the words began to construct images in my head of the mountain. The story made me feel nervous and scared for the man who was in this trail walking at 50 degrees below zero. The story continues creating livid images as there was a lot of figurative language. There were tons of it like “The result was a long piece of yellow ice hanging from his lips. If he fell down it would break, like glass.” The author compares the ice forming on his lip to actual glass making you picture how cold it must have been to form ice on your lips. Each paragraph just got more nerve-wracking since the man was still stuck in the freezing temperature trying to survive. As he builds the fire, I feel his relief but then the snow just falls on it and kills it making me hate the snow as if it was a character. However, towards the end of the story I felt sorry for the man since he died in the snow as he was not able to build the fire or make it back to his camp. Overall, the author uses a great ton of figurative language to make the story interesting and engaging to the reader.