To Build a Fire & An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: “Just representation of general nature”

By Jack London, read by Betsie Bush (LibriVox) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


        To Build a Fire by Jack London is a perfect example of what Samuel Johnson (1938) referred to as a “just representation of general nature”. The story showed tackled about man’s free will; or in this case the lack of it. The short story showed that man before hand has no power over what fate decided of him. In some way London presented that nature will take its natural course and man, a mere man, has no role in it. This is in some way universally true and has been the object of much scholarly debate over the ages. In the short story this was proven in the lines, “The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood (London, 1908).”

On the other hand the man’s second accident can be considered as contradictory to what London had in the beginning tried to imply. In the first part he demonstrated that man has no control over his fate. Her in the second part it was written, “But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! (London, 1908)” This would seem like a contradictory since the “avalanche” was caused by the man himself. He even said that it was his own fault. But on deeper evaluation, this merely reinforces the first contention of London that since man has no power over nature he should take responsibility over his actions in order to anticipate the potential dangers he might find himself in.

The world is based on a causal link, meaning each event is caused by the previous event. When the man built the fire he set the motion of the avalanche. He is responsible therefore for his own accident since he was not able to foresee what the result of that action would be. Here London demonstrated man’s inability to overcome his own limitations; restating again Johnson’s “just representation of general nature”.  In conclusion, To Build a Fire is about man over fate and man against himself which is a universal theme that transcends the limits of time and place.

By English: Ambrose Bierce, read by szparker (LibriVox) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
 

On the other hand the short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce demonstrates the least “just representation of general nature”. The following lines though quite significant in remembering American history, does not in anyway generally captures the sympathy of every modern man, “Peyton Fahrquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime.  Meanwhile he did what he could.  No service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war” (Bierce, 1891). These lines or characterization is not something every generation can relate to. Moreover the setting is quite limiting in a sense that those who have not experienced slavery the way America did cannot actually feel Bierce’s accurate depictions of the sentiments of the people at that time in history.

The lines, “The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank.   He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away.  An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout” (Bierce, 1891) where Fahrquhar was deceived by others and decided to take matters into his own hands were not given good justification if taken on its face value. To clarify this means that taken out of the context of loyalty to the Confederate, the action of Fahrquhar would seem ridiculous, if not outright outrageous. And this is actually where the present reader is. It is hard for the present generation to actually feel that Fagrquhar had a reason to be tricked into demolishing the bridge. Years from now the readers of this short story would find it difficult to understand without first having a background of the history of the American Civil War. The strength of the story lies in its twist in the end. Bierce achieved a great literary work in the “An Occurrence at Old Creek Bridge but it lacked the strength of Johnson’s “just representation of general nature” and therefore making it limited in time and place. The story would seem superfluous to the men centuries ago and to the men of the next centuries hence.

References

Bierce, Ambrose. 1891. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Retrieved 10 September 2007 from

http://extend.unb.ca/wss/1145demo/owl2.htm

Johnson, Samuel. 1938. “Preface to Shakespeare” Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books, ed. 

Charles W. Eliot. New York: P.F. Collier & Son. p 208-250.

London, Jack. 1908. To Build A Fire.

Retrieved 10 September 2007 from

http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html