SOURCE: “Why the Man Dies in ‘To Build a Fire’,” in The Critical Response to Jack London, edited by Susan M. Nuernberg, Greenwood Press, 1995, pp. 27–35.

In the following essay, Adams investigates ambiguities in “To Build a Fire” and suggests another perspective on the story.

During a discussion of “To Build a Fire” a student asked me, “Why was the man in the Yukon?” I answered that he was probably a prospector, since the “camp” in the story is an “old claim.” But only the earliest version of the story tells us explicitly that men are in the Yukon “prospecting and hunting moose.” I began thinking about that difference and other differences between the various versions of the story, especially major differences like the dog and the man's death, and it seemed to me that there was a general pattern to the changes London made. What was explicit and...