To Build a Fire Review

People think that we are the one things in the world that is needed the most to make everything right. While we are really the opposite of that, the earth would do much better without us here. People think that it is us vs. the earth and they say we will win the battle because we have made technology that will help us. I think that we will lose and the story "To Build a Fire by Jack London" shows this very well.

As the human race has grown in its knowledge we seem to think that we know what is best for the earth and the things that are on it. But really we are just another tiny "blip" on the face of the planet. Because we have made tech advancements we think that the rest of the world is incapable of taking care of its self. It's like we just use technology to put space between us and the rest of the world. Mother Theresa put this best when she said "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience It." she was right then and now. The man in the story thinks that the fire is a way for him to beat the cold but it is really his way of getting away from nature.

Nature is an untamable force that people can't stop even if they tried. Robert Green Ingersoll has even said “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.”  Meaning that doing good is not rewarded but you are also not punished instead there are consequences. The earth won't take much more of us and we can't take the time to fix what we have done. In the story "To Build a Fire" the man thinks that nature is weak and can't do much, but he soon found out how bad it could be. As he quickly learned it was much too cold to be walking in the frozen waste land of the Yukon.

The man in the story tried to face nature head on and win even thought he was very easily out matched. Try as he might the man could not get one thing to go his way after he faced off against nature. Nature is something that can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The Philosopher Aristotle once said "Nature does nothing uselessly." if nature makes it cold then it will be cold and if it makes it hot then the same thing will happen. The man in the story didn’t understand this very well because he still challenged nature.

In the end nature bests the man and he meets his fate. Things tend to repeat themselves in nature, so would we beat nature? No one really knows that answer but let’s not find out anytime soon. The answer may not be something that we want to know.