SOURCE: “‘Keeping His Head’: Repetition and Responsibility in London's ‘To Build a Fire,’” in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1, March, 1986, pp. 76–96.

In the following essay, Mitchell provides a stylistic analysis of London's “To Build a Fire.”

Even enthusiasts cringe at naturalism's style. Given excesses so plain and a motion so plodding, sensible critics have simply dropped the subject. And perhaps the greatest embarrassment has been caused by Jack London, whose flat prose seems especially open to criticism. His very methods of composition prompt a certain skepticism; the speed with which he wrote, his suspiciously childish plots, perhaps even his self-advertising pronouncements have all convinced readers to ignore the technical aspects of his fiction.

Yet good manners seem misplaced once we grant that literature need not appear a certain way, since it is difficult to see then what it might mean to reject a work's style as inappropriate...