Meet Your Ancestor: The Clown of 20th Century American Literature

We’ve all been a clown for something. Yeah, you know it. That boy. That girl. That test you really thought you aced.

Hurts to think about it, no?

It’s not easy, realizing that what you thought you knew was completely wrong, just another instance of our brains making something out of, apparently, nothing at all. 

But were we always clowns? Or did the 21st century just play us all? 

It’s strange… humanity’s pool of knowledge and technological advances grows every day, and yet it seems like more and more of us are becoming fools. 

 

The Man

The same idea actually forms the core of Jack London’s To Build a Fire, a short story he wrote in 1902, depicting a struggle between man and nature. 

Right off the bat, the chill of a bone-numbing Yukon winter can almost be felt through the pages. That cold is what embodies the idea of nature in the story as it surrounds and plagues the main character, who is referred to as “the man.” He’s accompanied by his dog, who is referred to as, go figure, “the dog.” 

And while the dog might be the man’s best friend, it’s clear from the start that the man is most certainly not the dog’s best friend. The man is completely unbothered by his situation, unconcerned by the 75-below-zero weather, the lack of sun, the miles and miles he intends to trek, or any of the other life-threatening factors he and his dog will face. 

He even mocks the warnings of the old man he talked to before, calling him “rather womanish.”

Because of London’s third person limited perspective, readers quickly become intimate with the man’s outright dumbfounding thought process. It’s not like he’s ignorant of his surroundings and circumstances—he’s ignorant of what they mean. The man is even well-equipped with survival skills. 

Yet, when his survival knowledge doesn’t pull through for him, what does he do? He laughs it off. The man focuses not on the danger he is in, but on how his mistakes will postpone his arrival time to a camp. 

I have to admit, my concern for his safety quickly turned into scoffing and eye-rolling.

But then it hit me. I’m just like the man. 

In fact, aren’t we all?

 

London’s Legacy

How many times have we strut into a situation, thinking we’ve got it all together, only to realize later how ridiculous we looked? 

One too many.

How many times do we think we know what we’re getting ourselves into, only to realize we knew nothing at all? 

Again, one too many.

Jack London recognized this growing struggle a century ago and illustrated it through and through with the man. 

London wrote To Build a Fire at the onset of his jam-packed 15-year writing career, his success catalyzed by his many harrowing life experiences prior to making his big break. According to biology.com, as a teenager, he “rode trains, pirated oysters, shoveled coal, worked on a sealing ship on the Pacific and found employment in a cannery.” 

He really lived it up as a youngster.

At 17, he endured a sealing voyage during which a typhoon nearly killed him and his crew. In his early twenties, he got involved with the Yukon Gold Rush, a crucial period in his life that armed him with the stories he yearned to write. 

It’s as if this one was the culmination of the pivotal lessons he learned in his youth, and let me tell you, London really did it justice. 

His cunning use of irony in not just the story, but also in my interpretation of it is what did the trick. Boy, did I learn. 

 

The Man’s Legacy

The scattering of irony is SPECTACULAR throughout London’s writing. Here are some examples:

1. The dog, with only his natural instincts, seems to be much better at survival than the man, equipped with many supplies. 
2. Despite his boasting of his extensive knowledge, the man really struggles. 
3. The old man warned him about the cold, but the man is somehow cool with losing feeling in his extremities.

And the cherry on top? 

1. My own judgment and ridicule of the man was hypocrisy in itself. 

It’s brilliant, the way London slapped me in the face when I realized my own ironic reaction to his story. What did I say before? I’m a clown, a fool, just like the man. His thinking is mine. So are his mistakes. As a reader, I have my own interpretations, but I like to consider other critics’ thought as well.

Writer and literary critic Anissa Rowe says that a “ deficiency in creativity [is] the man’s tragic flaw by the end of his journey across the Yukon.” I can definitely see the logic in her argument; the man has a shallow way of thinking, never considering the underlying implications of surface facts like the freezing weather. 

But that’s where my understanding diverges with Rowe’s. Taking into consideration London’s background and life experience, perhaps it’s more the man’s lack of critical thinking due to arrogance that reveals an intensifying weakness of man in the face of nature and in a world that fuels modernization, ease of life. 

To Build a Fire is a mirror that shows us just what that’s doing to our minds. As time goes on, the “easier” our lives get with things like technology, for example, the weaker we’ll be when difficulty comes our way.

We really think we’re paving the way for the future, extending the reach of technology in all parts of our lives? I think we’re diluting our humanity, restricting our potential. 

After all, isn’t what makes the human race so unique our ability to endure hardship, to have faith in overcoming impossible odds?

Instead of being clowns for the things that don’t matter, let’s start embracing difficulty and allowing ourselves to be made more resilient—stronger—by it.

It’s about time we stopped joking around, wouldn’t you say?

 

End note: I highly recommend watching this AFTER reading the short story.