To Build a Fire (1903) by Jack London

               Whilst looking at the time of creation of the book this story was derived from, the Klondike Gold Rush seemed to be a faint legend about a time of dreams to get rich and fast. This Gold Rush became something of a symbol like the California had, drew the attention of San Franciscan novelist Jack London. This book or short story appears to have been written through his studies of the Yukon area, where the Klondike Gold Rush was located near. Nevertheless, the story has its own distinctive nature - one of the fight against nature.
                Throughout the short story, there were adequate descriptions of the environment as it was the central antagonist - though arguably it could also be the secondary antagonist to arrogance. The main character was a man, and a man just like any other man; a man that thinks he is stronger than nature and that nature is not crafty nor simple; a man that highly underestimates the absolute power of nature. The Yukon trail that the man is travelling is at the time seventy-five degrees below zero. The man must travel through the snow to the camp and find that there is more or less danger at every corner: for example, there was an accident involving a hot spring that left him wet halfway to the knees and, under the weather conditions, would soon freeze his feet to the point of immobility. In the end, the battle against nature makes it so that the setting is also the antagonist.
Pictures!

 

I feel that this picture is particularly appropriate because of 1) Jack London is somehow in it, 2) The game is largely based in Yukon, 3) the video game creators have made a game called The Oregon Trail in which players must travel through the trail to reach California and it's a battle against nature (important note), Indians and for survival

I feel that this picture is relative, due to the story containing a dog companion that travels alongside the unnamed man. The man even had the gall to attempt to kill the dog and use its corpse as a heat source.

 

I actually found this picture somewhere; it's a depiction scene of the man and his attempts to build fire. The namesake of this story is an important note because it was the only chance he had at survival following the accident and it was a high goal for him for a good third of the story.

 

Just another depiction of the Yukon Trail during Winter. (Kind of hard to find a picture of similar conditions to the story because I doubt anyone's stupid enough to take a picture when it's that cold.)

 

This picture's decision was also to put the dog into perspective as a support character. It can be argued that it is also a main character, but its main purpose was to show the difference between instinct of animals and the laughable wisdom and folly of man. The dog in the end survives because he did not need to rely on intelligence nor stupidity nor arrogance - purely the instinctive drive for his travel. The man on the other hand was arrogant and did not believe anything from a man of experience until his death was at hand.