Quote:
“This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold…But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge” (London 1061)
Summary:
This is a quote from the story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. This thought appears after the man, who had managed to build a fire and eat his biscuits, decides to keep on traveling in this “real cold”. At this point the man is starting to get scared about the cold and about the numbness of his fingers but he decides to keep traveling, and the dog will follow him.
Response:
I think this quote explains the situation in which the man is right now. He basically doesn’t know what he is dealing with, and he is arrogant enough to think that the freezing cold won’t kill him. On the other hand, the dog knows, it has lived there all its life, and it knows that during such a cold weather it is supposed to hide and wait for it to pass. Thus, in this situation the man is the newcomer, and neither he nor his ancestors know anything about nature and the land where he is now.
Seeing the situation from the eyes of the dog, the man is the true ignorant, and he is totally unaware that the cold will kill him, but led by his greed, he won’t stop and think about it, he needs to move on and abandon the fire that could have saved him. Plus, the dog does not only see through the man because it compares the man’s ignorance to the ignorance of the man’s ancestors, because they were all strangers to that land, they invaded nature, and they didn’t know anything about how nature works in the Klondike.
Furthermore, like discussed in class, if we focus in the Marxist criticism, the dog would represent the Native Americans of the Klondike, and this comparison between the white man and the Native Americans would mean that even if these Native Americans had been conquered and reduced to the position of a dog, where they had to follow the white men and serve them, they still knew more than them. The Native Americans knew the land because they had lived there for hundreds of years, and this newcomer who thought was in control was just a fool who doesn’t know what he is doing, which is why at the end of the story the dog will live and the man will die.
“This man did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold…But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge” (London 1061)
Summary:
This is a quote from the story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. This thought appears after the man, who had managed to build a fire and eat his biscuits, decides to keep on traveling in this “real cold”. At this point the man is starting to get scared about the cold and about the numbness of his fingers but he decides to keep traveling, and the dog will follow him.
Response:
I think this quote explains the situation in which the man is right now. He basically doesn’t know what he is dealing with, and he is arrogant enough to think that the freezing cold won’t kill him. On the other hand, the dog knows, it has lived there all its life, and it knows that during such a cold weather it is supposed to hide and wait for it to pass. Thus, in this situation the man is the newcomer, and neither he nor his ancestors know anything about nature and the land where he is now.
Seeing the situation from the eyes of the dog, the man is the true ignorant, and he is totally unaware that the cold will kill him, but led by his greed, he won’t stop and think about it, he needs to move on and abandon the fire that could have saved him. Plus, the dog does not only see through the man because it compares the man’s ignorance to the ignorance of the man’s ancestors, because they were all strangers to that land, they invaded nature, and they didn’t know anything about how nature works in the Klondike.
Furthermore, like discussed in class, if we focus in the Marxist criticism, the dog would represent the Native Americans of the Klondike, and this comparison between the white man and the Native Americans would mean that even if these Native Americans had been conquered and reduced to the position of a dog, where they had to follow the white men and serve them, they still knew more than them. The Native Americans knew the land because they had lived there for hundreds of years, and this newcomer who thought was in control was just a fool who doesn’t know what he is doing, which is why at the end of the story the dog will live and the man will die.
1 comment:
20/20 Furthermore, like discussed in class, if we focus in the "Marxist criticism, the dog would represent the Native Americans of the Klondike, and this comparison between the white man and the Native Americans would mean that even if these Native Americans had been conquered and reduced to the position of a dog, where they had to follow the white men and serve them, they still knew more than them." Well said.
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