The narrator describes the Yukon Territory as 75-degrees below freezing and being a highly treacherous for anyone to travel alone (2). By introducing this hostile environment, London creates tension in the reader as they begin to question the man’s safety in the freezing cold temperatures, After the man falls into the river and starts to freeze to death, he builds a fire in order to survive. As the fire grows and the warmth spreads, the snow on a tree falls, knocking out his fire. Through struggles such as this one, suspense is created due to the severity of the danger the man faces and the risks involved in the
He later arrives at a creek is familiar with and remembers the danger of the hidden springs that ran off from the hillside which left pools of water nearly three feet deep, covered by a thin sheet of ice hidden under the snowy ground. At this point, the man is very concerned about accidently falling into one of these pools. "And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger." (113) Getting wet would only delay him, "at the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire...." (113) Every time he thought he came across a frozen pool, he would force the dog to go first to see if it is safe or not. At this point and time, he begins to get more and more nervous about the
In Daniel Woodrell’s novel, Winter’s Bone, the bitter cold of a typical Ozark Winter highlights the harsh and bittersweet lives of the characters in the story. Ree’s quest to find her father interspersed with familial interactions are sharpened by Woodrell’s crafted imagery and descriptions of the merciless winter, and the phenomenal writing which included superb word choice, authentic dialect, and evocative figurative language. In fact, the book would not have the same emotional impact without them. Throughout this finely crafted book, Daniel Woodrell transports the reader to the stark, bleak, and grim reality of the Ozark mountains where the people and the poverty are synonymous. By juxtaposing descriptions of the raw winter and the protagonist Ree Dolly’s bleak life, the reader feels a more intense understanding and connection to the heart-rending plight and events of the characters.
The short story, “To Build a Fire’ by Jack London is a devastating tale of a man who makes the foolish decision to go off the Yukon’s main trail. The story starts off saying “Day had broken cold and gray”(First Paragraph), as the man further travels off the path he gets into extremely cold temperatures, “The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow”(Second Paragraph). This man, this exceptionally foolish man who has never had a winter still continues to walk further upon the trail. However, this man was foolish but he was also simple, he looked at things in simplicity, he realized even though it was 50 degrees below freezing that the frost bite could be avoidable with mitten, hats,
His relationships, happiness, everything. He keeps circling around it because it is all that he has left, and in fact, the lake itself has become bad--a place that holds war memories of a deadly body of water. The road is a symbol for the mindset he cannot seem to leave no matter how negative his opinion of the town has gotten. Norman notices a sprinkler on a lawn he passes, saying that it was going “Hopelessly, round and round” (O’Brien, 140). That is exactly what he is doing driving around the lake, trying to trigger positive images from his life but he is not able to, he just keeps going around and around the lake like the sprinkler.
The stories had drastically different end results, characters, symbols, and plot; however, no matter the differences between a story, stories can still share the same message. In the story Freezing by Peter Stark, the character finds danger as his car no longer works and he needs to travel the 6 mile distance to his friends. Extreme hypothermia sets in and he battles to make it. His friends find him near death and he manages to become revived. In the story To Build a Fire by Jack London, the main character embarks through the Yukon with his dog to meet “the boys”, but ultimately dies as a result of many setbacks and mistakes including hypothermia and ignorance of instinct.
To start, sometimes characters have to the wrong thing for the right reason. For example in the text it says, “Rudy was carrying two bucket of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice… He [Otto] wasted no time in losing control of his bike, sliding across the ice and lying face down in the middle of the road.” (Pg. 162). Rudy and Liesel injure another boy in order to steal food from him. It was wrong of them to attack
According to Wolff “When the first sneering name, the first joke, the first slanderous myth of another race enters our ears, can we ever wholly cleanse ourselves of its effect? The harsh tones, swear words and all, used in “Hunters in the snow” echo Wolffs commitment to his characters and their authenticity. While this story grabs you and leaves you hanging, it does change the reader and I don’t think we can ever “wholly cleanse ourselves of its effect”. Levshunov References http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2005-Pu-Z/Wolff-Tobias.html#ixzz4uxuoAXtd http://creativewriting.stanford.edu/uncategorized/tobias-wolff
Literary fiction is “… written by someone with serious artistic intentions who hopes to broaden, deepen, and sharpen the reader’s awareness of life (Johnson 57).” Literacy fiction gives the reader a deeper view on the real world aiming the reader to empathize with the characters and others. In the short story, Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff is a prime example of literary fiction, as three men are hunting during a snow storm. Through the story, the author has the reader’s emotions shifting and engages the reader into what is going to happen next. Through the struggles of the men hunting in a snow storm, and getting injured the author shows actions of each character that the reader can relate to real world people, such as selfishness and
American novelist Tobias Wolff, in his short fiction story, “Hunters in the Snow,” strategically uses the cold, hostile setting of a snowy winter hunting trip to help center around oddly dark themes such as self-esteem, self-absorption, and overindulgence. The story is set in snowy, cold, miserable weather that makes it a struggle to even walk, shown by Tub having to trudge through the icy snow, “as the edge of the crust bruised his shins.” This battle against the weather relates to Tub’s battle against overindulgence, which effects the story by incorporating and symbolizing one of the key themes. This also symbolizes Tub’s self-esteem issues when battled against his hostile, cruel “friends.” The cold gradually becomes more of a problem throughout