In Jack London's "To Build a Fire" the use of word order and phrasing is typical of naturalistic fiction writers. These types of writers tend to focus more on the narrative and the descriptions, rather than on the characters. In fact, in this story we are only in the mind of the man a few choice times, and those are brief and sparse. Naturalist fiction writers tend to spend more time on the plot and there is a detachment that comes through because of it. Additionally Jack always liked to focus on the down trodden, or those who were from the lower socio-economic levels of life...giving them a built in motivation to attempt extreme things in the quest for riches.
