![]() ![]() At night, when all was quiet about the camp-fire, he would come to me as if I were his god” (Muir). During the rest of the trip, instead of holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me constantly in sight, and would hardly accept a morsel of food from any hand but mine. After the incident on the glacier, Muir writes: “Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. Muir’s dog, Stickeen, is not the same wolf-dog of London’s “To Build a Fire,” although the dog is similarly detached at the beginning of the story. Muir tells a vastly different story of companionship between dog and man. The dog understands man’s nature much more intimately than the man understands the wolf-dog’s nature, and for his lack of understanding, the man pays with his life. London writes: “There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire” (London). The dog does not understand why the man will not build a fire it does not understand the ways in which the cold are affecting the man’s brain. The dog, for all its rightful distrust of the man, refuses to leave the man’s side, although it does run snarling from him on a few occasions. In London’s story, the man slowly begins to succumb to the cold first his hands freeze, and he tries to kill the dog for warmth but soon, his whole body is freezing and he becomes less and less able to make coherent decisions, as is the case when someone is suffering from extreme exposure to the elements. This is not the way that man should bond with dogs the man is fighting the dog and the dog’s instincts rather than trusting them and engaging them properly. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface” (London). London writes: Once again, however, he had a close call and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. In London’s text, the man tries to force the dog into certain behaviors, rather than encouraging it and engaging it as a man should engage his dog. The bond between the wolf-dog and the man is minimal, because the man cannot or does not respect the instinct that the dog has. The man forces the dog to do things that it does not want to do, things that go against its instincts. The wolf-dog is aware that the man is exercising poor judgment, but does little to help the man or to save his life when the man dies, the wolf-dog heads back towards camp without a second thought regarding the man and his fire. The dog is man’s connection to nature, and he ignores the animal’s instinct, to his detriment at the end of the story. The dog represents the wild, nature it is something elemental and instinctual in London’s work. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's judgment” (London). It knew that it was no time for travelling. ![]() The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. “At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky,” he writes, “the proper wolf-dog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. In London’s “To Build a Fire,” the first impression of the dog is less of a dog, and more of a wolf. However, the most fascinating aspect of the stories is the relationship between man and dog. Both Muir and London braved the Alaskan wilderness and wrote about their experiences Muir’s “Stickeen” was a piece of creative nonfiction, while “To Build a Fire” is fictional piece in which the narrator shares the mind of a dying man. There is something about the wilds of Alaska that bring out the essence of man. Their canine companions were often their only company on treks through the wilderness, and this intense loneliness forced them to consider the relationship between humanity and their canine counterparts. London and Muir knew the wilds well: both were naturalists who spent much of their time exploring the unexplored parts of the world. Jack London's canine-human relationship recognized and even glorified the ancient wolf-like tendencies of the dog, while John Muir's dog exemplified the common classification of dog as “man's best friend.”īoth Muir and London were fascinated by the wild in the dog, and the fearless manner in which canines face their fates. Both writers also utilized canines in their stories, although they addressed the relationship between dog and man in vastly different ways. Both Jack London and John Muir were lovers of the outdoors, and this love is reflected in their writing.
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