Foreshadowing in To Build a Fire :: London To Build a Fire Essays

Foreshadowing in To Build a Fire   In the apologue To Build a Fire by Jack London, foreshadowing is often used. In this story foreshadowing is an hard-hitting way to build up a climax. The foreshadowing is both shown by the environment and things the characters say.   An example of environmental foreshadowing was when it said, Fifty degrees below nought stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be unemotional against.... Another example was when the mans fire was blotted out. These examples show that the cold will be the mans doom, but foreshadow only by telling the necessary details.   A major point of foreshadowing was what the oldtimer told the man. The oldtimer told the man that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after 50 below. If the man would have listened, he could have survived. Because he didnt listen he lost his life.   In conclusion, if you read this story c befully you will pull up the small hints and know the outcome of the story. This also shows that foreshadowing net be direct statements or simple statements of fact.   Self Confidence   formerly a mans self-importance confidence is shaken, it becomes increasingly difficult to act rationally.   If you be in a life or death situation, every finality you consecrate stacks the odds either for or against you. Once you make a few bad decisions, you realize that your chances for survival are get slimmer and slimmer. As this fact settles into your conscious mind, it produces panic. Panic is what happens when the brain cant handle the randomness it is given. Panic takes over rationality, and as a result, you do and say things that are uncharacteristic of you. Panic destroys your self confidence.   In Jack Londons short story To Build a Fire the reader watches a mans mental thoughtfulness go from high to devastatingly low. At the first of the story, he is very self confident in his own abilities. This is evident by the wa y he keeps saying the he will be in camp by six.   Also, when one suddenly becomes physically handicapped, and abilities that he depends on and previously took for allow are not available to him, he tends to act very insecurely and unstably.