Question B (5 points)
Read the following passage from to Build a Fire, by Jack London, then answer the
question.
The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer on
Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the
law that no man munt travel alone in the Klandos after fifty below. Well, here he
wax; he had had the accident; he was alone and he had saved himself. Those old-
timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to
keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone.
There was the fire, snapping and cracking and promaing life with every dancing
fame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick
German ancka were like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the moccasin
strings were like rods of steel wil twisted and knotted an by some conflagration. Fora
moment he tagged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his
sheath-knife.
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
anow on its boughs. No wind had blows 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 capaized its load
of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsining 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!
Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow
What is the theme of this story!
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was actualy a woman.
The man's diamaxal of the old-timer's advice led to ruin
O the danger of traveling in cold weather
O Man's stacle for survival in an inhospitale ent