Jack London is characterized as a naturalistic writer through most of his literature works, for instance, The Law of Life and To Build a Fire. In the two short stories, Jack incorporates naturalism themes such as nature vs. man, death, and the struggle for survival. The author presents main characters who struggle to survive with the indifference of nature to survive, but they ultimately die as nature wins the war against them.
In To Build a Fire, London presents a protagonist who sets out on a journey despite the harsh weather. The man was warned against traveling during the extreme weather, but he decided to fight against nature. Through his journey with the dog, the man faces nature’s indifferences, but the man puts on a struggle against the harshness. For instance, the fire he builds goes off, but he tries doing it again (London 125). Moreover, his body was freezing until he could not move his feet, but again, he tries running which was not possible, and he died of the extreme cold that made his body numb. In the end, the man dies because nature overpowers him in his struggles because he lost the war of man vs. nature.
In The Laws of Life, Jack London incorporates naturalistic themes such as death, nature’s indifference, human determination despite the hardships encountered, and nature’s unstoppable power. The author uses Koskoosh as a naturalistic example in this story. Koskoosh had to struggle with nature’s indifference since his childhood life until old age. During his childhood, a great famine forced his family to move in search of food. As he becomes the chief of his tribe, Koskoosh also has to fight against nature and in his old age, he realizes that he does not have the power to overcome nature, thus his death. His tribe left him to die in the snow in his old age, and he had to accept that nature rules because he could not fight against death (London 1055). In the story, the main character tried to overcome the struggles in life, but he, later on, realized that nature is unstoppable.
In essence, Jack London’s short stories To Build a Fire and The Laws of Life are said to be examples literary works. London’s short stories consist of several naturalistic themes making the interpretation that he is a naturalistic writer reasonable.
Works Cited
London, Jack. “To Build a Fire.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
6th ed. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. 118-29. Print.
London, Jack. “The Law of Life.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Ed. Nina Baym, Jeanne Campbell Reesman, and Arnold Krupat. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 1052-1057.
