In the United States, as well as in many other places in the world, the authors" style of writing changes over a period of time. Many styles such as romanticism, realism, regionalism, and many others were used by different writers throughout the history of that particular country. Naturalism is one of those styles, and it emerged in the United States at the beginning of the 1890s. In this essay, I will explain the specific focus and emphasis of Jack London's naturalism in his text "To Build a Fire ". London is one of the most famous American naturalistic authors. Then, I will also compare and contrast his naturalism in that text with the one that Dreiser, another naturalistic author, uses in his short story, "The Second Choice".
To begin with, it is important to know that every naturalistic writer puts a different emphasis in their text. In London's text "To Build a Fire ", I have observed that he puts a specific focus on "man against the elements of nature". What I mean by this is that he shows in his text the hard realities of life that can happen when humans have to fight against nature. He demonstrates in this story, and he does it very well, that humans can rarely win struggles that pit them in opposition to Mother Nature. He also tends to focus on the instincts of the dog that follows the man throughout the story.
Actually, there are several good examples of confrontation between the man and nature that are included in the story. I think that the most obvious of those examples is when the man falls in a mountain's spring. Even though he was aware of the dangerous waters that were on his way, and that falling in one of them could lead him to death, he fell in one. And it is wrong to believe that he fell in it because he was not paying attention to those springs; it is clearly said that it happened "[ ] where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath [ ]" (Perkins & Perkins, 1999, p.
