Read the following excerpt from Jack London's "To Build a Fire."
But all this - the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail,
the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold,
and the strangeness and weirdness of it all made no
impression on the man. It was not because he was long
used to it. He was a new comer in the land, a chechaquo,
and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was
that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert
in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the
significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd
degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold
and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him
to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature,
and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within
certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on
it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality
and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero
stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm
moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero
was th him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That
there should be anything more to it than that was a
thought that never entered his head. As he turned to go
on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive
crackle that startled him. He spat again.
What part of the plot is the author most likely developing in this portion of the
story?
A. Exposition
B. Rising action
c. Conflict
D. Climax