Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” is a story of a man, whom we know little about, trying to survive and traverse in the Yukon during extreme cold conditions.  However, the man does not survive.  Through both bad luck and judgment, the man has a series of mishaps that he, being alone, eventually cannot overcome.  The reader may wonder whether it is London’s style that makes this story so gripping or the impending doom that befalls the man.  It is nevertheless slightly disappointing to reread “To Build a Fire” and never have a happy, prevailing, or just indifferent ending.  To test whether it is the tragic ending or simple, realist style that makes the story so compelling, I present an alternate ending of comparable style.

From the 23rd paragraph (pg. 982 of Norton Anthology):  He cut the strings hastily and returned the knife to its sheath.  At that moment, something 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.  With the successful fire underneath and man’s continuous pulling at the twigs, an imperceptible agitation was sent to the spruce tree.  Several of the lower boughs were significantly stressed.  Their branches creaked ever so slightly, as they would in a stiff breeze.  However, there was no wind during this season.  The man had come to know this, and the mere presence of the alien sound caused him to hesitate from removing his moccasin.  The dog too, perked its ears up.  Both looked in dismay as a drop of snow roughly the size of a fist fell to the ground, landing on the fringe of the fire.  That event seemed to take minutes, and the pause after, hours.  The man’s thoughts were rushing, searching for an explanation.  The dog sat up slowly and backed away from the clump of fallen snow.  The man saw this, almost unaware of its significance.  Then, he looked at the fire.  The creaking continued; it was gaining intensity.  The man jolted up as if startled and lunged towards the fire.  Using both hands to prevent failure, he captured some of the flaming twigs.  He tucked them close to his waist and spun around away from the remaining fire.  The snow of the boughs had already begun capsizing in sequence down the tree, and before the man could take a step away, it was all on top off him and the fire. 

He was stunned momentarily and then looked down at the twigs he had taken.  They were still glowing red like blood.  He inspected the embers briefly, perhaps mesmerized.  He knew they were his survival.  He grinned so much as the ice-muzzle would allow at the thought of holding his own life in his hands and of outsmarting the tree.  The smoldering twigs would not last a minute.  He would need to start a new fire with them.  As he scanned the area for more kindling, sensation began to return to his hands.  It was a sensation of pain, though.  The man knew his flesh must be burning, but he could not drop the twigs.  He just needed to block out the pain and find a safe place for the twigs to burn, he told himself.

He resolved to carry the smoldering twigs to a pile of brush that he had been picking at.  He stumbled over to the spot, shivering and shaking the snow from his back.  The twigs were still held close; they were his precious cargo.  He began to feel their heat penetrating through his many layers of clothing to his abdomen.  Though, random searing pains were all his hands could feel.  As he cleared some snow from the brush pile with his feet haphazardly, he noted their complete numbness and wondered how he was still standing.  The leg that had succumbed to the trap was startlingly rigid.  The wrinkles of his pants were frozen in place with a sugary glazing of ice. 

The sting of his hands returned the man to the concern of the twigs.  He fell to his knees and gently placed the handful of fiery twigs in the bed of brush.  He tried to pack some more kindling around the twigs, but his movement was too erratic.  He could not feel his hands at all; the sting of their burning had already left.  With his panic now evident, he began striking his hands against his thighs with excessive force.  Then, he tried arranging the new kindling again, this time moving his arms instead of his hands.  Slowly and steadily, he built a nest for the embers to burn in.  Roughly a minute had passed since the spruce tree disrupted his fire.  The embers of the twigs were fading now, as he thought they would.  He moved in closer to them and blew as calm and steady as possible with frozen, shivering lips.  He clutched the nest of kindling and embers.  All his thoughts were focused on the success of this fire.  He held the nest tighter, continuing to blow.  He could see the embers flare up, but nothing was catching—not the dry grasses, not the broken twigs, not the frayed bark.  His hands and arms were starting to shake.  The cold of space was sneaking up on him.  He needed to get the blood flowing again, he thought.  He could still see the embers deep inside the nest, but no flame and no smoke.  Then, there was a violent shiver.  It scared him enough that he stopped blowing on the nest; he was out of breath anyway.  The success of this fire looked bleak.

What the man did next was partly due to his lack of breath and circulation and mostly due to his maniacal panic from the failure of the fire.  Still holding the nest of kindling and embers, he threw his arms into the air and began to wave them up and down with much force and speed.  During the fit, his mind started to wander away from the fire to thoughts of his own death.  This was the first time he had allowed death to enter his conscious thought.  The man was almost about to accept his fate, but shook the idea off and looked at his hands.  Then, he suddenly stopped waving.  He blinked.  Was there smoke coming from his hands?  Excitedly, he leaned back down to the clearing in the brush and peered into the nest in his hands.  At that exact moment, a small flame jumped up from the mass of grasses and started to catch a shard of bark alight.  The man’s eyes were wide, now.  He reached for larger twigs nearby.  Realizing again that his hands were too far numb to grab, he grumbled a bit and slid the fresh twigs over to the nest which had quickly become a fireball.  The twigs caught ablaze easily.  He moved larger and larger bits of wood into the jumble of fire.  When it was of a suitable size, he turned his attention back to his freezing limbs.  With some difficulty, he finally had his hands back in the mittens.  He placed them near the fire while he leaned back to take a deep breath and then watched as it froze into an ice cloud and drifted off.  It certainly was cold, he thought, shifting himself closer to the fire.

The man looked up to briefly examine the trees around him.  Because of the urgency that he keep his fledgling fire alive, he had failed to move it out of the trees.  This new site was not as threatened by snow falling from trees as the previous one had been, and the man did not think he had it in him to move the fire yet again.  He was going to put his confidence and life in the observation that no tree branches were directly above his fire.  He looked back at the fire.  The dog was creeping around to it.  The man cursed the dog aloud for its worthlessness.  This caused his icy, amber beard to snap in half, the sharp pain ceasing his harsh words.  The dog reeled back a bit and laid down.

Once the fire had returned enough feeling to his hands, he was going to find some larger firewood to feed it with and perhaps something to sit on.  There was one thing the man had not taken into consideration before getting up, though: that he had been sitting on his legs for several minutes now in a foot or more of snow.  When he went to stand, he just stumbled backwards and slid on his back down the slope a ways.  The cold and his constantly numb limbs were beginning to frustrate the man now.  He let out a loud, extended grunt and started stretching his legs to restore the slightest feeling to them.  He had to clap his hands in the air to keep them from going numb, too.  He imagined that he must be quite a sight to see and wondered if he was losing his sanity by flailing about on his back in the snow.  Then, he rolled onto his chest, sat up, and staggered down the hill to the bank where he had seen larger dead-fall.

He didn’t have to walk far before finding two sizeable, downed spruce branches.  They were brown now and would burn readily.  He began dragging these back to the fire as best he could.  He was becoming aware of how tired he was, then, and he had a comforting vision of the boys patching him up when he arrived at the camp.  They would have a fire going with some thick stew bubbling overtop it.  He would gorge himself and then could get some rest.  He paused for a moment to rub his eyes and proceeded back to the fire, toting the branches under his arms.

The dog was licking itself next to the fire when the man arrived with the branches.  He shooed it away so he could break the branches up and stack them on the fire.  This would last him until his clothing had dried and he had restored circulation to his hands and feet.  He leaned a few branches on a rock for a seat and proceeded to remove his moccasin.  The dog crept back up to the fire and watched him.  It could not understand the man’s actions but was simply content that he had provided fire.

A few toes were left without feeling even after the man had tried everything he could think of to revive them.  A deep sense of disgust lingered in his stomach.  He would surely lose these toes.  They had gone whiter than the snow around him.  He reached for his sock to check its dryness and then slid it over his frostbitten toes.  The rest of his clothes felt sufficiently dry, as well.  It was time for him to continue his trek up the creek.   He dressed and then checked his watch; it was nearing three o’clock.  This incident had set him back roughly an hour and a half.  He wanted the stew to still be warm when he got to camp.  He threw a few more branches on the fire and started off, picking up a suitable walking stick before leaving the trees.  The dog stayed with the fire for several minutes before running to catch up with the man, who was preoccupied and forgot to call it to come along.

It took an hour for him to encounter anymore traps along the left fork of Henderson Creek.  He had been intensely watchful for them and took to prodding the ice in front of him with his walking stick to test the footing.  He was pleased when this technique had found a trap which was otherwise undetectable to him.  His carefulness slowed his pace, but he felt that it justified itself when he didn’t have to stop to build a fire for another trap catching him.  He saw more traps every quarter hour or so and came across another two with his walking stick alone.  He was staying safe but making horrible time.  It was getting dark and he thought he must still have two or three hours to travel.  He wished he had had some snowshoes like Jim would wear in deep snow.  That would keep him from the trouble of all these traps.

At five passed six o’clock, he spotted something ahead by the bank; it was faint but clearly unusual in this wintry landscape.  When he came up to it, he found that it was a scarf with a simple black and red plaid design.  He stood and stared at it for a while.  It looked familiar; however, he could not place it.  He thought it might have been one of the boys’ scarves and wrapped it around his neck.  After a few minutes of walking, an idea came to him.  He stopped and pulled the scarf taut over his legs.  Then he took his sheath knife, cut out two eye holes, and tied the scarf around his face.  He thought this might keep his cheeks from freezing anymore, as they were already painful enough.  Since he had found it, he did not think the boys would mind the holes.  They’d probably get a kick out of it, he thought, chuckling to himself as he walked.

The man and dog continued on towards camp for two more hours without incident—besides the occasional avoided trap.  It was night, but the moon, even at only half full, reflected the snow enough to see the creek and majority of traps.  He had a feeling that camp was close but wondered why he could see no smoke from it.  The dog did not break ahead of him, yearning towards the smells of camp as it often did.  He thought this was considerably odd and reached inside his jacket to an inner pocket.  He had never been to this camp, but the boys had given him a small map with specific directions before they had parted ways.  He stopped to recheck the map, watch, and a compass.  Everything looked right; camp could not be more than a mile away.  He continued up the creek slightly alarmed and confused.

It did not take ten minutes before something caught his attention; it was up the hill of the right bank.  Through the many trees, he could make out a slanted line, something manmade certainly.  He pulled down the scarf and began to walk towards it.  Another slanted line met up with the first.  This had to be a roof, he thought.  He struggled up the bank into the trees.  And then, there was confirmation:  a smokestack rose up from the white between the two lines.  He called out towards the building, shattering the evening silence and his amber beard.  There was no answer.  He picked off the ice from his chin and called out again, louder.  Some birds leapt into flight from the trees near him, and then silence returned.  The man stood there dumbfounded for a while, staring at the building.  Maybe they had turned in early tonight, he hoped.  He walked onward with an enveloping uneasy feeling that caused him to stagger as he went.  There were four buildings here just as the boys had told him.  Two were the same size but one was substantially larger while the fourth was the outhouse.  He stumbled into the center of camp and sat on a cutting block.  No smoke rose from any of the buildings.  Snow had built up in front of the doors.  There were no sleds or dogs.  There were no footprints but his.  There was no one here but him.  He had been walking to this camp all day with no companion but a dog, but now he felt completely alone and colder than ever.

The dog appeared from around a building, sniffing along the wall.  It was searching for food.  The man, too, was hungry.  He wondered if any supplies had been left here.  The boys could have left some things behind knowing they would return.  But why were they not here?  The cold interrupted his thoughts.  He should not sit still; his feet were already numb.  He got up and walked over to where the dog was.  It was digging at the door of one of the small buildings.  The man opened the door and peered inside.  It was dark; he could not see much except a rusted shovel and bow saw that lay on a shelf.  This must be the storage shed, he thought.  He grabbed the shovel and went to the larger building, using it to dig out the snow to the door.  Inside this building were several cots, a couple wood stoves, a fireplace, some cabinets, a table, and chairs.  He set the shovel by the door and sat down to think.  The boys should have been here a week ago.  Perhaps they ran into some trouble that slowed them down or were waiting out the cold snap.  He should wait for them so long as some food could be found.  He could catch a bird and use it to bait a snare.  He remembered the boys talking about how they ate foxes here last winter.  He hunched forward and looked at his feet.  He tried to wiggle his frostbitten toes, but they were still quite lifeless.  Would he have to remove them himself?  He cringed and sat back up.  He did not want to consider his toes now.  The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had been right.  It was unwise to not heed his advice and wait out the cold snap.  He was lucky to have survived.

There was scratching outside by the door.  A moment later, the dog wandered in with a frozen fish in its mouth.  The man watched with intrigue as it sat and licked at the fish.  Then, he stepped outside and looked around by the door.  To the left buried under a foot of snow were a number of trout—at least three or four.  He reached down and pulled one out to examine.  It looked edible, but would have to be thawed, scaled, and cooked of course.  He needed to build a fire.

 

I reached acceptable but perhaps mixed conclusions about my ending with the assistance of a couple test readers.  Having not read “To Build a Fire” before, they were both given a copy of the original beginning, original ending, and my alternate ending; the endings were not labeled as such.  One aspect that is certain is the continuance of Jack London’s style; neither reader knew for sure which ending was the original.  They did not mention any loss of realism either, but merely that my ending was “happy”.  I suspect that they meant it was the happier of the two, as it was written to just be indifferent and somewhat of a mystery.  I don’t believe that this ending can compete with London’s slow and traumatic fatalist ending.  It has nothing in particular to say.  It is just an interesting change.