Background of the author
Class Discussion Questions:
1. Unlike the narrator in "The Open Boat," the narrator of this survival story is difficult to identify with any certainty because neither the man nor the dog is capable of reporting what happens "after the fact," and yet the narrator seems to have intimate knowledge of exactly what happens, why it happens, and what each character is thinking as it happens. If we cannot ask "who," then what kind of narrator is telling this story? What point(s) of view or attitudes does the narrator have?
2. Compare the "knowledge" of the man and the dog. How does the narrator know that "Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment"?
3. Identify a moment where the narrator seems to know something the man does not know. Then identify a moment where narrator seems directly in sync with the sensory experience of the man. How do these two extremes help create the Naturalist tone of the story?
4. In light of the narrator's strategies, reflect on your involvement as a READER in what happens to the man. Are you sympathetic, apathetic, annoyed, etc.? How do you account for your response in the WAY the story is TOLD? Does the man change by the end?
5. What is the conflict in "To Build a Fire"? Remember, a conflict exists between two things. How is this conflict expressed in the story?
6. In what way does the essay "What Life Means to Me" make Jack London seem more idealistic than he seems as the author in "To Build a Fire"?
7. Does Jack London sympathize with human suffering? How does this sympathy relate to being a Naturalist?
8. What is the value of THINKING, as opposed to merely observing or reacting?
