journal 42

Nika Bogoslovsky
3/19/08
London

Quote: “He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenderness of the effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out.”

Summary: He finally had a fire burning with his last matches but a piece of moss had fallen on his flame and disrupted it. He tried desperately to fix nature’s attempt at putting his fire out but he failed.

Response: I’ve always really enjoyed this story and it’s one that I like to read over again because I always pick up something new. The title has always intrigued me because it’s always fun to figure out all the different things it could mean. Fire was something that had always belonged to nature but never to humans. Even in Greek mythology, the Gods become angry with Dionysus, the Greek God who gives fire to the humans. And always in cartoons you see the cave men who try endlessly to make fire by rubbing stone and twig together. In this story about man vs. nature, man fails in using everything given to him by his human brain and loses his battle against nature. He cannot build a fire for the life of him, literally, but originally, man was never supposed to be able to possess fire anyway. London is saying that we as humans have lost touch with nature and have become arrogant. If the man took his own advice and the advice from others, and became closer with nature he would have survived.