[kari07]

I am writing an essay on jack london and the setting my thesis is.. a forest is a vast space filled with a multitude of obstacles, course changes, and shows the strength of life much like how Jack London expressed through words with the immense travels of a young man. My english teacher said to change my thesis to where it talks more about the cold than the forest.. any help?

[Wondergirl]

The cold as an obstacle? Physically as in temperature? Emotionally as in indifference? What would the thesis be?

[kari07]

My thesis is... a forest is a vast space filled with a multitude of obstacles, course changes, and shows the strength of life much like how Jack London expressed through words with the immense travels of a young man. I was just wondering how I could change that

[Wondergirl]

Your teacher said focus on cold -- so write about both physical and emotional coldness in London's books.

[kari07]

Do you have any examples on how I can focus on cold.

[Wondergirl]

Nature is the inscrutable force that must be fought against day and night for survival. And the beasts are part of a world which the naturalists called the “hostile environment” where pressures from every side dictate its creatures' survival. Fang's world in its frozen hostility and its cold indifference is pictured most poetically:

"A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild." (White Fang, p. 3)

[Wondergirl]

"Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the skyline and dip immediately from view." ("To Build a Fire," p. 1)

[Wondergirl]

"To Build a Fire" is the best known of all his stories. It tells the story of a new arrival to the Klondike who stubbornly ignores warnings about the folly of travelling alone. He falls through the ice into a creek in seventy-below weather, and his survival depends on being able to build a fire and dry his clothes, which he is unable to do.

[Wondergirl]

In Jack London's Northland short stories socks, warm moccasins, mittens and fire failed him. While the man could not survive without fire, the dog could. The dog was much closer to its ancestral way of being than the man is. It appreciated fire, but it was not a necessity for its survival. The man was not fit to survive in the cold, but the dog, which seemed to be a lower animal, could stay alive.

[Wondergirl]

That was all copied and pasted from the Internet after a Google search on London and cold. Please don't plagiarize.

[Wondergirl]

Living in the deserted Northland, humans can’t help dwelling on the eternity of the land and feeling their finiteness. As frequently on trail, what our characters saw and what they experienced soon taught them the first lesson to survive in the North: fear and respect for nature. Facing the mighty nature, humans understand that they are too small and effete to exercise their own will. The Northland wilderness was deadly cold and silent and full of hidden dangers. Humans shivered in the cold, felt lonely and frightened by the ghastly silence. These points were exactly what Jack London wanted to convey through “The White Silence,” the short story in which Nature...

[kari07]

Where did u get that from? The first part and who is fang? And the information under it is in the book correct?

[Wondergirl]

That was all copied and pasted from the Internet after a Google search on London and cold. Please don't plagiarize.

Fang = White Fang

Have you read any of London's works?

[kari07]

And where did you get the part where you said nature is the inscrutable force that much be fought against... and all that.. and oh yeah I know I wasn't planning on writing all that word for word because I found that on Google as welll.. and yes I am writing my essay on how to build a fire.. that's why I am asking for help on my thesis

[Wondergirl]

physical cold = Northland
cold indifference = Northland

Two kinds of cold, physical and emotional. Both are detrimental to men in all sorts of ways. Much of that was snippets from essays... wanted to show you how much can be written about both kinds of cold.

[Wondergirl]

You're using only one London short story as the basis for your essay?

[kari07]

Yes I am just writing about how to build a fire and tallking about setting that is what I need help with my thesis

[Wondergirl]

The setting is obvious. One builds a fire to warm his body, and one builds a fire also to warm his soul. Northland = cold temps and cold indifference/hostile landscape, so fire is necessary to give comfort to both body and soul.

[kari07]

Okay then.

[AK lawyer]

do you have any examples on how i can focus on cold.

You have not read "To Build a Fire" lately, have you? I suggest you read it again. I was born and raised in the sub-arctic, so the proagonist's troubles are instantly recognizable to me. Perhaps they are not to you.

And, Wondergirl, I don't know that cold is a metaphor or not. Perhaps, I suppose. I never thought of it that way.