"Keeping His Head": Repetition and Responsibility in London's "To Build a Fire"
Author(s): Lee Clark Mitchell
Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 76-96
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831433 .
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MITCHELL
LEE CLARK
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
His
"Keeping
Head":
and
Repetition
"To
London's
in
Responsibility
Build
a
Fire"
so plain
style. Given excesses
critics have simply dropped
the
sensible
and a motion so plodding,
has
been
caused
And
the
embarrassment
by
perhaps
greatest
subject.
Jack London, whose flat prose seems especially
open to criticism. His
cringe
Even enthusiasts
at naturalism's
prompt
very methods of composition
with which he wrote, his suspiciously
have
self-advertising
pronouncements
the technical
Yet good
not appear
mean
aspects
manners
a certain
the speed
childish plots, perhaps even his
all convinced
readers to ignore
skepticism;
of his fiction.
once we grant that literature need
misplaced
a certain way, since it is difficult to see then what it might
to reject a work's style as inappropriate.
Indeed, the very strange-
ness of naturalism's
seem
vision emerges
so vividly in its prose that wrenched
stylistic maneuvers soon seem to the point. As we have come to acknowledge with cubist perspectives,
shapes style, not maladroitmetaphysics
ness. Once admit certain large claims about time and character, and
naturalism
appears
inaccessible
merely
of naturalism
less inadequate
to conventional
to them. Or vice-versa,
allow
criteria than at last
the contorted
styles
their effect, and customary assumptions
about
time and character all of a sudden begin to erode. Such writing clearly
testifies to what is for most an alien vision of experience
and, therefore,
to achieve
almost bydefinition veers from realiststandards.
But itis far from inept.
Still, all of this risks too much too soon by linking the varied styles
of naturalism to individual
author's control. What we need to do here
is merely
to loosen
our critical categories
and to agree that while
not
at
least maladroitness
can
metaphysics
disprove maladroitness,
may
be approached
as a kind of after-the-fact metaphysic.
for
Postponing
76
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77
ultimate purpose, we can
that is, the question of London's
simply describe what happens in one seemingly rough-hewn work?his
short story, "To Build a Fire" (1906).
the moment,
I
As good a place as any to begin is with the story's concluding
parawhere
the
most
to
be
graph,
style's very strengths appear
dramatically
little more than flaws. The unnamed
man who has repeatedly failed to
ward off the Arctic cold at last slips into frozen sleep, watched over by
a gradually
bewildered
dog:
Later the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and
caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristleand back away. A
little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced
and shone brightlyin the cold sky. Then it turned and trottedup the trail
in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers
and fire providers.1
These
lines seema
"sense
bit abrupt and lend a halting rhythm to the story's
but we cannot merely ascribe their oddity to
For whatever his intentions, there is no
quirkiness.
of an ending,"
London's
personal
this is a self-consciously
that
structured prose, evident specifidenying
minor transgressions.
London refuses to suborcally in the paragraph's
dinate clauses, for instance, though the more natural form of description
invites
such
a pattern. And as if even greater formality were desired,
are
inverted ("a little longer it delayed,"
for
phrases
self-consciously
example, and "the camp it knew, where were the other food providers").
Yet the more convincing
evidence
of stylistic control appears
in the
most striking feature: its multiple repetitions. Just as alliterparagraph's
ation echoes
a series of "l"s, "c"s, "b"s, and "t"s through to the final
clause's
that phonic stutter by trusting
"f-p"s, so syntax compounds
almost
to the copulative?seven
times in five relatively short
exclusively
sentences.
instead of in the
Prepositional
phrases emerge additively
usual subordinated
pattern (as when the dog trots "up the trail in the
direction of the camp");
one phrase merely rewords, that is, rather than
extends
another.
Even the shifters repeat, crosshatching
the whole
identical
words
and
sounds
"stiII"\"little
through
later").
("Later"\"later";
And although it may first seem that this gives events a certain progressive
that effect is countered by the passage's
reliance on the simple
sequence,
1 Jack
London,"ToBuilda Fire,"inLostFace(Macmillan,
references
aretothis
1910),p. 98. Allsubsequent
editionandappeardirectly
inthetext.
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LEE CLARK
78
MITCHELL
that
the very temporal elaborations
past tense, as if it were avoiding
consciousness.
reflect
a
narrative
controlling
Throughmight otherwise
each clause offers itself autonomand sometimes
out, each sentence
Phonemic
and syntactic
units only loosely interconnected.
world larger
repetitions, in other words, reveal not an interdependent
but
than the sum of its grammatical
the
absenceofan
parts,
very
organiz-
ously?as
ing grammar
to the text.
The paragraph's
verbal echoes remind us that the plot itself reiterates
a few basic events. On a single day, an unnamed man walks in seventyfive-below-zero
temperature, stops to build a fire and eat lunch, resumes
walking, falls into an icy spring, builds another fire that is obliterated
by snow from a tree, then fails to build a third fire before finally freezing
to death.
Banal
as these events
are one by one, they repeat themselves
as the man attempts over and over to enact
into an eerie significance,
the story's titular infinitive. In turn, everything that somehow
contributes
to those attempts is doubled
and redoubled,
iterated and reiterated,
to
once.
occur
as
verbal
Just
leaving nothing
only
repetition disrupts a
normal
grammatical
progression by breaking
so
the
recurrence
of things themselves
units,
phrases
into autonomous
has a curiously disruptive
narrative effect. By disconnecting
things from each other, repetition
instills a certain static quality to the story's motion. Moreover,
the reit?
erated
concentration
story's events,
plot as onward
on the material
which
gradually
narrative progress.
effect in "To Build
Its unsettling
repetitions of this passage:
lends
draws
a paralyzing quality to the
into question the very notion of
a Fire" is nicely
illustrated
in the
Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startledhorse ....
The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom?no creek could contain
water in that arctic winter?but he knew also that there were springs that
bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top
the ice of the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these
springs, and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They hid
pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three
feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn
was covered by the snow. Sometimes there were alternate layers of water
and ice skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through
for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the waist.
That was why he had shied in such a panic. (71-72)
Whatever
it lacks as exposition,
the passage
clearly shows
have
seemed
one
might
paragraph's
idiosyncracies
actually
the story. The subject?some
form of H20?is
repeated over
whether "creek,"
and "ice" three times
"water,"
"snow,"
"springs"
and "skin" twice,
or the implied
referent of "froze,"
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that what
integrates
and over,
apiece,
or
"frozen,"
LONDON'S
"TO
A FIRE"
BUILD
79
and "wetting." For both man and dog, that alternating substance forms a series of fatal "traps" that are themselves
phonemically
which never quite freeze the springs.
reiterated in the cold "snaps"
"bubbled,"
Other
internal
an alliteration
Sentence
sentence
rhymes reverberate through the text, as does
that extends from the hard "c"s in the second sentence.2
structures
and
themselves
repeat, whether resuming from similar
were . . ." "They
hid . . ."; "Some("They
in the middle ("Three inches
. . .");3 ordividing
adverbs
subjects
times . . ." "Sometimes
but he knew"; "He knew . . . and
deep, or three feet"; "he knew ...
he knew"); or turning on chiasmus
a skin of ice half an
("Sometimes
inch thickcoveredthem,
and in turn wascovered
bythesnow").
Finally,
the grammatical
whole
man "shied" away.
binds together with the repeated
claim
that the
As in the earlier
paragraph,
multiple repetitions return us back to
in
and
tend
the
began
process to drain whatever suspense
we might otherwise have felt in the action. Narrative progression seems
denied through the very stylistic recurrences that integrate the passage.
where
Or
we
rather, to be
singularity
more
asserted
precise,
at
the
the text's very doubleness
opening?"Once,
coming
bend
. . . ." Through multiform repetitions of phoneme
implied danger of the scene is rendered commonplace.
belies
the
around
a
and syntax, the
And that effect
is compounded
shift in preterite, from the
by the passage's
overarching
tense
of
"he
shied
simple opening
abruptly" to the closing perfect of
"he had shied," all of which is subtly divided by a series of past participial
constructions.
Instead
tense
action
forestall
of spurring expectation
onward,
repetition and
in a tableau
of ever-recurring,
never-changing
elements.
II
establishes
Repetition
reasons that are neither
a compelling
pattern in London's
nor
Most
simple
straightforward.4
Arctic for
obviously,
2 One
occurslater,
withthe"tingling"
and"stinging
ache"thatis "excruciating"
complexly
pattemed
rhyme
tolackmanyexamples,
alliteration
(86).Andwhilethispassagehappens
occursnearly
as frequently
throughout
as at itsconclusion.
A small,random
includes
sampleofsuchinstances
(65),
"daydark"(63),"spatspeculating"
"numbnose"(67), "warm-whiskered"
down"(69), "first
(67),"dropped
(85-86),
faraway
signalsofsensation"
"fetched
forth"
feet"(86),and"daydrew"(97).
(86),"freezing
3 Another
notableinstance
occurson pp. 74-75,whereinone paragraph,
each sentence,
sometimes
each
"He [transitive
phrase,beginswiththeformulation
verb]...."
4
was certainly
notthefirst
to observethat"all lifeis a repetition,"
or that"recollection
and
Kierkegaard
are thesamemovement,
Butmostsubsequent
studieshavebeen
repetition
exceptin oppositedirections."
influenced
byhisRepetition
(1843),trans.and ed. HowardV. and EdnaH. Hong.Vol. VI of Kierkegaard's
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80
LEE CLARK
MITCHELL
its effect is entropic, reducing the man to the purely physical
by depriving him initially of a will, then of desires, and at last of life
itself. The process of repetition, moreover, again first appears at a verbal
however,
level?and
"Cold" occurs
notably with the word most often repeated.
in the first half of this short story more than twenty-five times, with an
effect that is altogether predictable.
For as the narrative's focus on the
immediate
contributes to a paralyzing
physically
so the repetition of a thermal absence
gradually
textual temperature.5
Or rather, it is the emphasis
"tyranny of things,"
seems to lower the
on intense cold?no
after all, than molecular
an irreducible
inactivity?that
exposes
to the very air itself.
corporeality
The "tyranny of things" that develops
from a repetitive concentration
on the material world tends, as we have seen, to breakdown
characterismore,
tic connections
between
both objects and events. Yet repetition itself
stasis in terms of the story's hero, exercising
implies a more ontological
its power most fully by isolating not event from event, but event from
actor.
The repetition
seems
to resist human
of things and events creates an environment
that
intention?one
in which desires fail over and
over to be able
pation,
and
to shape results. Consequence
the narrative gradually separates
the ineffectiveness
ever falls short of anticithe man from his world
of his will?not
merely to reach camp
but to avoid various "traps," then to build a fire, and
to
forestall
the Arctic's numbing effects. The "tyranny of things"
finally
prevails over the man first by depleting his physical resources, and then
by exposing
by six o'clock,
more
which
importantly by separating him as agent from an environment
deliberate
actions might have determinate consequences.
As repetition of things makes the conditions
in
they form seem somehow
(Princeton
oftherelation
Press,1983),p. 131.MirceaEliade'sdiscussion
between
Writings
University
repetition
and timelessness
in prehistory
has provocative
formyreading
of London.See TheMythofthe
implications
Eternal
Return:
trans.
Willard
R.Trask,
Series46 (Princeton
or,CosmosandHistory,
Bollingen
Press,
University
as "thedominant
1954),esp. pp. 34-36,85-90,123. E. K. Brownfirst
device"ofthe
recognized
repetition
See Rhythm
intheNovel(Toronto:
novel,though
ofToronto
manyofhisideashavebeensuperceded.
University
Press,1950).
Ofrecent
writers
on repetition,
see especially
Robert
TheArtofBiblicalNarrative
Alter,
(BasicBooks,1981);
PeterBrooks,ReadingforthePlot:Designand Intention
in Narrative
A. Knopf,1984);}ohnIrwin,
(Alfred
andIncestfRepetition
andRevenge:
ASpeculative
ofFaulkner
Doubling
(Johns
Reading
Press,
Hopkins
University
ItAgainandAgain:Repetition
in Literature
1975);BruceF. Kawin,Telling
and Film(Cornell
Press,
University
andRepetition
1972);andJ.HillisMiller,Fiction
(Harvard
Press,1982).
University
5 The
itto definethematerially
Levin's,whoaptlyinvoked
phraseis Harry
worldsofrealism.
importunate
Partofmyargument,
willbe thatnaturalism
defines
a distinct
modeandthatin naturalistic
however,
literary
textstheillusionofthings
matters
itdictates
behavior
withas
enoughforabsenceto be thematized
directly;
an effect
as presence.
See "Society
as ItsOwnHistorian,"
inContexts
ofCriticism
straightforwardly
"tyrannous"
(Harvard
Press,1957),p. 186; also,"WhatIs Realism?,"
University
of
pp. 67-75;and "On theDissemination
inGrounds
forComparison
Realism,"
(Harvard
Press,1972),pp. 244-61.
University
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"TO
LONDON'S
BUILD
fixed and determined,
81
A FIRE"
states of being similarly
its effect on ephemeral
levels of possibility. And as plot recurrences seem
drops them to lower
to diminish the capacity for personal control, so verbal reiterations more
in experience.
generally foreclose the prospects we normally assume
When the man carefully builds a second fire, for instance, the warning
implied
by the repetitions offsets the description's
calm understatement.
This served fora foundation and prevented the young flame fromdrowning
itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching
a match to a small shred of birch bark that he took from his pocket. This
burned more readily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the
young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually,
as the flame grew stronger,he increased the size of the twigs with which
he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out fromtheirentanglement in the brush and feeding directlyto the flame. He knew there must
be no failure. (79; emphases added)
The
very invocation
of "flame"
five times
in seven
sentences
ensures
not the prospect of fiery success,
but rather ephemeral
effect
hope?an
that seems even more fully confirmed by the fricatives that proliferate
Likewise, the reiteration shortly thereafter of the
through the passage.
confident
claim
that "he was
safe" establishes
instead
a mood
of immi-
nent peril. By translating the singular into a set, doubled
language
verts linguistic authority, in the process replacing routineassurance
a series of lingering doubts.
subwith
This verbal
effect is especially
clear with words that unlike "flame"
refer to capacities,
not conditions.
And it is hardly surprising in a story
devoted
to the consequences
of low temperature
that the privileged
of how to forestall them?or
that the
capacity should be a knowledge
word "know"
should
that "know"
occur
is a special
as well as consciousness,
nearly as often as does "cold." Keep in mind
kind of word, invoking possibilities of certainty
and thereby suggesting capacities
for deliber-
ation and choice.
it implies control of contingency,
since
By extension,
of
the
can
mediate
the
in
and
turn
knowledge
past
help
present
directly
all sorts of signs, just as Lord
shape the future. Huck and Jim "knowed"
Mark
knows
why Kate Croy rejects him, and the terms of knowledge
in both cases dictate how consequent
action is to be understood.
That
is jeopardized
in "To Build a Fire" and finally precluded
by
comes
repetition, as the man's alleged knowledge,
invoked,
increasingly
to seem first inadequate,
then simply irrelevant. Having thoroughly
possibility
subverted
the effectiveness
of knowledge,
repetition
at last lapses
into
silence.
the effect of these verbal echoes
is the repetitive synCompounding
tactic pattern of the story. Indeed, its paratactic flatness creates a world
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82
LEE GLARK
MITCHELL
where
somehow
a
everything appears
already ordered,
constraining
single fixed character in a narratively static, seemingly timeless world.
The implications
of London's
sentences
can be
simple, disconnected
no more
appreciated
only through illustrative contrast, and perhaps
one could be found than Henry James's late style. That style,
obvious
it hardly needs stating, reflects a wholly different conception
of charac?
ter, since
less for adapting to the unalterable
than for imaginatively altering experience
itself. The way clauses tumble
out of grammatical
or
characters
thickets,
complete (only to distort) each
other's
James valued
individuals
or shifting perspectives
illumine prospects for action:
these narrative patterns seem to confirm James's philosophical
pragon the world, his late novels elaborate
matism. Instead of perspectives
claims,
that create the different worlds
perspectives
well as his readers live.
in which
his characters
as
The pattern of London's
prose itself suggests a vision radically at odds
with this epistemological
model. Avoiding
narrative contingency,
his
celebrates:
the authority of indisyntax denies what James everywhere
vidual perspective.
Clauses
rest on an equal footing instead of linking
in dependent
structures,
with the effect that experience
seems
already
fixed and thoroughly unalterable.
James's flexible grammar and tentative
as ever open-ended,
ever to be reshaped by the
tone reveal experience
London's
flat
of
sentences
have the contrary
power
language.
regular,
effect of denying any shaping power:
does happen, it could not be otherwise,
tory connectives."6
ition that parataxis
is the absence
Erich Auerbach
defies
of clausal
as it
"everything must happen
and there is no need for explanadoes not mean in this famous defin-
rules of causation
subordination
or consequence;
rather, it
that encourages
us to read plots
as if they lacked alternatives.
While James's hypotactic texts seem to
characters to order life idiosyncratically,
London's
encourage
prose in?
stead enforces a single causal order and instills a sense of certitude by
returning again and again to the same stylistic place.
Yet the syntactic repetitions of parataxis have a further effect worthy
of attention?one
much like that of repeated words, but best illustrated
in spatial terms. Just as the close doubling
of physical objects
blurs
distinctions
between
this and that, here and there (or rather, this and
this, here and here), so the repetition
of something
in time dissolves
the
6 ErichAuerbach
makesthisclaimforFrench
of Reality
in Western
epic in Mimesis:TheRepresentation
trans.WillardR. Trask(1946; rpt.Princeton
Literature,
offers
Press,1968),p. 101. Londonhardly
University
anepicvision,buthisYukondoesshareonestylistic
thatthealready
ordered
worldresists
individual
assumption:
anddesires.
perceptions
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LONDON'S
"TO
between
edges
A FIRE"
BUILD
then
and
now.
83
Something
in Tennessee,
that happens
once?a
jar
but seems to encourage
a
say?not
only enables,
mapping of fixed coordinates.
By contrast, something exactly repeated
tends to confuse a single determinate order. Seeing double, like hearing
exact echoes,
disorients precisely by not allowing a fixed priority, and
placed
can be asserted, that unsettling effect remains. One of
until sequence
the results of the momentary disorientation
by this kind of
produced
In
same
the
time
itself
seems
is
that
way, paratacsuspended.
repetition
structure a narrative that more generally denies its own
Such
and, in the process, creates an aura of timelessness.
tical repetitions
temporality
an effect seems
pauses at
unlikely in a story that opens at 9 o'clock,
in
which
a variety
ends
at
and
lunch
at
and
for
dusk,
12:30,
10, stops
of shifters abound
(such as "when,"
"after," "at last," and
"before,"
in a while").
"once
of singular
absence
But this very specificity,
events,
effectively elides
when
coupled
the passage
with an
of time that it
to demarcate.
pretends
In the central
his freezing
for example,
the man starts a fire to thaw
sequence,
free
and
is
about
to
cut
his moccasin
lacings:
just
legs
But before he could cut the strings,it happened. It was his own faultor,
rather,his mistake. He should not have built the fireunder the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull the twigs
fromthe bush and drop them directlyon 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 fullyfreighted. Each time he had
pulled a twig he had communicated a slightagitation 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! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh
and disordered snow. (82-83)
Without
plotting multiple repetitions once again, we should not fail to
that "it happened"
echoes the earlier disaster when the man fell
into the spring water ("And then it happened").
As there, the two words
notice
contain
versatile
in each
the experience.
Yet more to the point, we never confuse the
"it" that floats through the passage and that bobs up so variously
of the first four and last two sentences.
The very shifting of
referents under
the pronoun paradoxically
clarifies the scene, as one
event unfolds from a basic paratactic structure.
timeless
completed,
The real clincher,
While
the word seems
completed
is the curiously immediate "Now":
"Now
this carried a weight of snow . . . ."
at first to recover us to time by breaking the text's
however,
the tree under which
he had done
pattern, the "Now"
serves
here not as adverb
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but expletive.
LEE CLARK
84
MITCHELL
Indeed, by merely marking time, it reinforces the narrative's pervasive
As well, the overly simple syntax, the pronounced
lack
timelessness.
of subordinate
atomize
clauses,
the scene?all
the
work
subject
as do
references
and
and
repetition
from the initial "it" onwards
verbs
tense.
that each
The
whole
resists normal sequence
and simply elabothat seems already completed.
rates an experience
Here as elsewhere,
the text links sections by stylistic rather than narrative causality?by
a
of
not
narrative
Actions
pattern
grammatical signifieds,
signifiers.
prompt
not other actions,
sentences
so much as each
sentences,
contingent
turns back on itself, in the process fostering the impression of temporal
collapse.
Perhaps
the best way to understand
this effect is by turning to London's
version of the story. There the man has a name, builds
one-page
a fire, and survives, toeless but with the hard-learned
moral, "Never
travel alonel"
the
stories
define
different
a differClearly,
experiences,
earlier,
ence
nowhere
better exemplified
than in their central
paragraphs:
But at the moment he was adding the firstthicktwigs to the firea grievous
thing happened. The pine boughs above his head were burdened with a
four months' snowfall, and so finely adjusted were the burdens that his
slight movements in collecting the twigs had been sufficientto disturb the
balance.
The snow from the topmost bough was the firstto fall, strikingand
dislodging the snow on the boughs beneath. And all thissnow, accumulating
as itfell,smoteTom Vincent's head and shoulders and blottedout his fire.7
Exactly half as many words (92 vs. 183) appear in only a third as many
links
(4 vs. 13). Though brief, in other words, the passage
with a leisured ease that assumes
sentences
narrative concompound
sentences
tingency. Events can be anticipated and intentionally avoided, and therefore responsibility can be affirmed. By contrast, the later version avoids
participial constructions.
Simple repeated sentences
only serve to confirm the response presaged by the ominous
"it happened":
all has been
and
the
human
will
can
have
no
effect.
As
already enacted,
explanatory
connectives
help to authorize the didactic force of the early version, so
the repetitive, tableau-Iike
style of the latter shapes a narrative world
free of contingency?as
free in the future as in the past, and therefore
as inevitable
as determinism
requires.
It will not do,
undermine
however,
simply to note the language's
tendency to
its own meaning,
or even to unravel the stylistic features
LXXVI
JackLondon,"To Builda Fire,"TheYouth's
Companion,
(May29, 1902),275.
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LONDON'S
"TO
that influence
A FIRE"
BUILD
85
And no matter
us to read the narrative deterministically.
is repeated (and thereby, like other words,
nonetheless
the problem of knowledge
shorn of significance),
persists,
We
need
and
with
related
issues
of
responsibility.
negligence
along
now, in other words, to turn to thematics in order to see if plot aligns
how often the word
"know"
with style in shaping a response more complex than first glances allow.
Having rejected the old-timer's counsel before the story begins, the man
to walk alone after fifty
to regret having decided
can only continue
below.
From the opening
sentence,
one that is "dim and little-travelled,"
when
he leaves
the main trail for
we tend to see him as independent
in the temperature as in the thin ice
implications
of not building a fire as
he walks, of the consequences
well as of building one under a spruce. His mishaps are certainly unfor-
yet remiss?of
across which
chilling
tunate,
then, but since
seems
at least partially
a "close
call"
no greater caution,
encourages
Or is he?
for his condition.
he
responsible
The philosopher
Thomas Nagel would argue not, claiming that only
our paradoxical
views about human action mislead us into conflating
intention, and responsibility.
negligence,
points out that this
Nagel
results in our willingness to blame someone
for what is not his
that he characterizes
in terms of the phenomenon
fault, a willingness
paradox
of "moral
luck."
"Where
a significant aspect of what someone
does
on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in
depends
that respect as an object of moral judgment,
it can be called moral
luck."8 The example that Nagel offers is of a driver accidentally
running
over a child:
If the driver was guilty of even a minor degree of negligence?failing to
have his brakes checked recently, for example?then if that negligence
contributes to the death of the child, he . . . will blame himself for the
death. And what makes this an example of moral luck is that he would
have to blame himself only slightlyfor the negligence itselfif no situation
arose which required him to brake suddenly and violently to avoid hitting
a child. Yet the negligence is the same in both cases, and the driver has
no control over whether a child will run into his path. (29)
Ensuing effects, in other words, shape our sense of antecedent
causes,
just as consequence
powerfully alters our understanding of prior action.9
8 Thomas
references
Press,1979),p. 26. Allsubsequent
University
Nagel,MortalQuestions(Cambridge
inthetextandaretothisedition
ofhisessays?inparticular,
to"MoralLuck"(1976),pp.24-38,
appeardirectly
andObjective"
andto "Subjective
(1979),pp. 196-213.
9 Or as he asserts
inall such
ofa listofhistorical
notablefortheirdecisiveactions:"Itis tempting
figures
casesto feelthatsomedecisionmustbe possible,inthelight
ofwhatis knownatthetime,whichwillmake
turnout.Butthisis nottrue;whensomeoneactsin suchwayshe
unsuitable
no matter
howthings
reproach
whathe hasdone"
intohishands,becausehowthings
takeshislife,orhismoralposition,
turnoutdetermines
(29-30).
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LEE CLARK
86
MITCHELL
This is not, of course,
to claim that future events somehow
lead to past
but
it
is
so
that
"results
influence
conditions,
true,
Nagel claims,
culpability" fully enough for the usual terms of responsibility to begin to seem
absurd.
"To Build a Fire" nicely illustrates Nagel's discussion,
since we tend
to hold the man culpable
for having made an error of judgment.
And
his status as a chechaquo,
"a
notably, it is ignorance that characterizes
in the land" who has been out before in only "two cold
newcomer
snaps." Though he might well have complied with the old-timer's advice,
as the narrator indeed continues to stress, the same narrator also signifiYet even could the
cantly admits that "he was without imagination."
man have
of so low a temperature, or consiimagined the implications
dered what it means to travel in this region without a partner, or somehow
the treacherous
would not necessarily
anticipated
spring, consequences
have
for the better. Nagel's
driver might likewise have taken
route. The point in either case is not that different actions might
led to better consequences,
but that the possible consequences
of
altered
another
have
We customarily asany action are always to some extent unforeseen.
sume that since reasonable
degrees of knowledge and caution sometimes
avert disaster, that therefore even greater degrees
must decrease
the
hazards
potential
of action.
Yet the situations
of both men illustrate the
can ignorance
be seen
fallacy of any such logic. Only retrospectively
to have led to disaster, and questions of responsibility are dramatically
excluded
by the stress on unanticipated
pride may seem
events.
The
unnamed
man's
to compound
the effects of ignorance,
and
impetuous
we may therefore assume
for the moment that greater caution might
have saved him. Yet from a broader perspective, forbearance,
judiciousseem somehow
ness, and circumspection
simply irrelevant when we
can so readily imagine the man's negligence
leading instead to different
his second fire not being obliterated
consequences?say,
by snow, or
as in the earlier version, his third attempt succeeding.
Just as the repeated stress on what the man allegedly knows unsettles
our faith in his wilderness
lore, so the narrator's similar overemphasis
has the effect of drawing all knowledge
cally and narratively, the text questions
into question.
any causal
Both grammati-
pattern to the inter-
section of action, event, and will, and the reader is left no better able
than the man to anticipate
accidents.
As it happens,
we perceive
no
mistake in the five long paragraphs that detail the fire's careful construction, and
we too are led to assume
be forestalled.
pinned
that in this instance
Only when consequence
to a universe of "moral luck,"
clarifies
likewise
the cold
will
error are we likewise
surprised
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after the fact
LONDON'S
"TO
A FIRE"
BUILD
87
thus
by far less than sin. The narrator's attempt to fix responsibility
that is everywhere
as
on a retrospective
exposed
depends
moralizing
profession of those values is given
to identify with him
little narrative support. Indeed, we are encouraged
made
to realize that the
and
against his own self-critical judgments
factitious,
and even
the man's
own
are less striking than
of his being "without imagination"
implications
the narrator didactically
asserts. Rather, as the text shows, responsibility
in a world where knowledge
must always seem misplaced
proves to be
will
is
as irrelevant as the
ineffective.
as for Nagel's driver, the issue is not one of
a case of "if he were different, it
but circumstance?not
For the unnamed
character,
wouldn't
have
man,
happened,"
but of "it needn't
have
happened,
however
he acted."
Grant that neither the man nor the driver responds passively
even grant that each one actively causes
his separate
it remains nonetheless
true that what each man cfoes de?
catastrophe;
on
has created. Significantly, we
conditions
that
neither
pends largely
to conditions;
never learn whether
the Arctic trekker happens to forget or in fact never
fires in the open. Knowledge
in
appears
not to matter in this kind of a world, and by denying
knew
that it is safer to build
some
radical
sense
the possibility of prospective choice,
ness of retrospective
regret. Since
hardly ensures
narrator's
The
keeping
a host of others, the man's
stern moralizing
narrative
the text exposes the inappropriateobedience
to one wilderness
law
reinforces
only seem
self-censure
and the
misplaced.
this emphasis
on unknowable
consequence
by seeming not merely to taunt the man's desire, but to thwart his will
in a process that only succeeds
in exculpating
the man. No occasion
at first occurs for such treatment, since before noon desire and event
match seamlessly:
the man keeps the pace he wants. But near mid-day,
his assurance
first gives way to doubt, and the rhythm of contingency
shifts: "/f he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six."
and the conditional
Now, conditions
begin to prevail, as both man and
reader are shifted back and forth: ". . . if his feet are wet. If his feet are
dry . . ."; "but now it ebbed away"; "But he was safe"; "If he had only
had a trailmate; "Even if he succeeded";
"Yet he was no better off";
"but the birch bark was alight"; "but ...
his shivering got away with
was aroused."
him"; "But it was all he could do"; "But no sensation
This clotting of "ifs" and "buts" occurs almost exclusively
in the narrative's middle third, as confidence
shifts from doubt to despair. At those
extremes
of the emotional
spectrum, as at the beginning and end of the
story, it is irrelevant whether desire happens to align with experience.
But the central section?where
"things go wrong" and desire is for the
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LEE CLARK
88
MITCHELL
The
first time denied?foregrounds
vain hopes and dire contingencies.
itself signals the shift; after
and conjunction
altered use of conditional
the story's midpoint, the "ifs" and "buts" stress only prospects inimical
to the man, elaborating
all he will never achieve.
By voicing his desire
in the subjunctive,
against a diminishing set of possibilities, the narrative
the immutable shape that consequence
accentuates
invariably gives to
event.
In the subfreezing
one.
that shape tends to be a frozen
enervates the man, leaving him be-
Arctic, moreover,
cold
The life-draining
slowly
in the natural that makes
his body seem some?
how other: "When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether
or not he had hold of it. The wires were pretty well down between him
mused
at the mechanical
and his finger ends."
have
that one should
And later, "it struck him as curious
to use his eyes
his hands
in order to find out where
The
were."
and
here (between
"his")
"him," "one,"
With his
and impersonal.10
personal
to
and
a
now
begin
diverge?as
objective
body
thing apart, subjective
or strikes matches
to restore circulation,
he beats his limbs savagely
disjunction
very pronominal
marks a growing split between
with his teeth only to cough out the flame,
seared hands in a final fire-building attempt.
had to do was
that "all a man
limbs,
then his torso follow
decapitated.
"Keeping
to keep
frozen toes,
his head"
had
the stench
or endures
of
It may sometimes
be true
but when at first his
his head";
his body becomes
essentially
a matter of
seemed
otherwise
but the story nicely
turns on the profound
impl ications of what it is that physical ly composes
inessential grows inanimate and consciousness
a self, as the seemingly
figurative
The
self-composure,
narrative
separates
the man
slowly
from his desire
level, transforming the personal
radical, grammatical
by wrenching language and affronting conventional
disintegrates.
at an even
more
into the impersonal
usage. Although by
as
at
the
as
be
beginning, neither his body
may
strong
are any longer his own. Not only does the cold dismantle
the end his desire
nor his actions
him physically, but syntax itself presents him in a fixed paratactic envi?
the narrative exronment. Through a series of deadening
maneuvers,
numbs and imfrostbite
that
him
to
a
textual
progressively
poses
mobilizes.
Instead of being ascribed to a "self," actions are synecdochiwalk, for instance, a mere "eager
cally assigned to parts of his body?his
he
into the frosty air." Elsewhere,
nose that thrust itself aggressively
10 This
thelastsentenceinthe
effect.
division
occursearlierand to similar
See, forinstance,
pronominal
quotedabove,on p. 78,
paragraph
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LONDON'S
"TO
BUILD
A FIRE"
89
the man's heels trotted a dog." And
by extension?"At
of negathroughout, he is denied grammatical
presence by a sequence
tive formulations;
"did
not
or
"never
entered
the
man,"
thoughts
worry
appears
only
his head,"
even
while
"made
no impression."
When emotional,
are
the text offers
responses
represented,
experiences
automatic
physiological
to him. Thoughts,
them externally, as apart from and happening
he has them, no longer "occurred,"
but entered "into his head";
with an almost
physical
weight
"in his consciousness";
when
or sat
or "reiterated"
of his consciously
from the cold, his
withdrawing
"blood"
"recoiled."11
autonomously
Long before the cold penetrates,
the text incapacitates
the man by denying our projected
sense of him
themselves.
Instead
as a coherent,
It is clear
view?and
identifiable
indeed,
contributes
to
self.
a Fire" offers no simple, single point of
that the very tension between various perspectives
that "To
much
Build
of the
story's
The man's
power.
increasingly
a narrative omniscience
that alter-
is set against
panicked consciousness
nates between fierce moralizing and cold
point of view
single
compete
controls
Yet while no
impersonality.12
the text, each one nonetheless
seems to
for that control:
He was sure to frosthis cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of
regretthat he had not devised a nose strap of the sort Bud wore in cold
snaps. Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them.
But itdidn't mattermuch, afterall. What were frostedcheeks? A bit painful,
that was all; they were never serious.
Emptyas the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant. . . .
(71)
This characteristically
from one
abrupt transition between paragraphs,
voice to another, provokes a series of questions:
vivid
Why give
impressions only so soon to dismiss them as intellectually
limited? What is
shifts into the man's awareness
gained by a narrator who unexpectedly
and then as abruptly out? And why does he elsewhere
deny the man's
claims with "in reality," or peremptorily refute his knowledge,
or inveigh
even
against his utter lack of imagination,
curiosity,
intelligence?"The
trouble
with him . . ."? To concur
with these
judgments
leads
to the
11 The
it.Thebloodwasalive,likethedog,andlike
passagereads:"Thebloodofhisbodyrecoiledbefore
thedogitwantedto hideawayandcoveritself
thefearful
cold"(80). See also p. 89.
up from
12 Thefreeindirect
discourse
accordedthedogforms
a third
voicethatappearslessobviously?at
theend
ofthestory,
forexample,intheconcluding
first
theman's
paragraph
quotedabove.Atothertimes,itrenders
"throat
sounds"and uncharacteristically
movements
fromtheuncomprehending,
instinct-ridden
threatening
oftheanimal(notepp. 76-77,90). Butthisthird
voiceis lesscritical
to thestory's
perspective
development
thantheothertwo.
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90
LEE CLARK
MITCHELL
that the man simply fails according
to wilderness
in
as
the
he
illustrates
a cruel moral
standards;
early version,
supposedly
to Yukon travel. Yet such an interpretation fails to account for too much
didactic
conclusion
of the story, sacrificing all that we have seen of stylistic and thematic
to the rough plot correspondence
with an earlier version.
complexity
The man's perspective
itself, moreover,
injects an urgency into the
narrative that only further exposes the superficiality of such moralizing.
After all, we too fail to anticipate
his mistakes and are as surprised as
he by the turn of events. The evocation
of his premature assessments,
his frustrated desires,
and
nation
our sympathies
are denied
and
growing agitation pulls the reader into the
text. Distant as we otherwise feel from someone
who lacks either imagior knowledge,
our wills too
where
The text's powerful,
heightened.
as it does the man, progressively
align
our
persistent,
with his at those
own
sense
points
of foreclosure
repetitive rhythm affects us
both of us from customary
alienating
assumptions
by absorbing us into the narrative's determinism. A curious
result of this diminished
sense of control is that the narrator's critique
turns back on itself; his censure of the man calls its own terms into
question.
Recall
thecentral
paragraphofthefire'sdisastrousobliteration
observations
of what might
(quoted above, p. 83). Despite subsequent
have been done, the narrator shifts the terms of responsibility by qualifying his claim that it was the man's "own fault or, rather, his mistake."
His very hesitancy
has the effect oftranslatingguilt
into mereinaccuracy.
Even the admitted
tones are the
possibility that these self-exculpating
that
the
is
in
therefore
free
indirect
own,
prose
discourse,
only helps to confirm what has been clear all along: that in sharing the
narrator's weak moral assumptions,
the man cannot escape
a spurious
man's
and
self-indictment
that compounds
his self-alienation.
IV
"To
Build
a Fire," then, subverts
our expectations
about
negligence
and the will by presenting events happening
to and, as it were, at the
man. Left at the end as at the beginning,
he forms nothing more than
a meeting of forces?nameless,
self less, a place for events to happen?
and the story comes to seem less a process of reducing him than a
revelation
of how
the narrative
little there was
thwarts the man's
it also
foils the narrator's
Much
as both character
knowledgable
control,
all along. In much the same way as
to ward off the cold, moreover,
desire
impulse to hang moral tags on experience.
and narrator are made to seem incapable
of
both still continue
to exist as lively
however,
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LONDON'S
presences
"TO
in the text. Responsibility
may no longer be at issue and the
of a coherent self may have therefore disappeared,
but some-
possibility
thing nonetheless
remains.
To understand
and more generally how itcontributes
we must now return to Nagel.
his paradox of moral
Approaching
the one
91
A FIRE"
BUILD
above,
quoted
Nagel
what that presence might be,
to naturalism's revision of realism,
luck from an angle different than
to
a fundamental
clash:
points
. . . between the view of action frominside and any view of itfromoutside.
Any external view of an act as something that happens, with or without
causal antecedents, seems to omit the doing of it.
Even if an action is described in terms of motives, reasons, abilities,
absence of impediments or coercion, this description does not capture the
agent's own idea of himselfas itssource. His actions appear to him different
fromother things that happen in the world, but not merely a differentkind
of happening, with differentcauses or none at all. They seem in some
indescribable way not to happen at all (unless they are quite out of his
control), though things happen when he does them. And if he sees others
as agents too, their actions will seem to have the same quality. (198-99)
Or as he had earlier
"a person can be morally responsible
concluded,
for
what
he
but
what
he does results from a great deal that
does;
only
he does not do; therefore he is not morally responsible
for what he is
and is not responsible
for. (This is not a contradiction,
but it is a
between the "responsible"
paradox)."13
Nagel's
point in distinguishing
and the "morally responsible"
is to clarify that what someone
actually
does need not coincide
with that person's sense of his actions.
For as
the perspectives
however frequently we
differ, so do the categories,
confuse them. The latter, which corresponds
to what we think of as the
seems
than
the
former
"self,"
considerably
larger
category, which might
more
simply
be
labeled
"character."14
And
it seems
so because
our
13 See
retreats
fromthisconclusion,
troubled
pp. 34-36. Paradoxor not,Nagelfinally
precisely
bythe
inexorable
terms;
"Wecannotsimply
takean external
evaluative
viewofourselves,
ofwhat
logicofitslimited
we mostessentially
are and whatwe do. Andthisremains
trueevenwhenwe haveseenthatwe are not
forourownexistence,
or ournature,
orthechoiceswe haveto make,orthecircumstances
that
responsible
oursandwe remain
thepersuagiveouractstheconsequences
theyhave.Thoseactsremain
ourselves,
despite
sivenessofthereasonsthatseemto argueus outofexistence.
Itis thisinternal
viewthatwe extendto others
inmoraljudgment"
offreewill,sinceonlytheassumption
defines
us as fully
(37).We mustliveas /Ypossessed
human.Andwe adoptitnotbecauseitmaybe true,butbecauseanyalternative
viewofourselves
as affected
indeedannihilates
us: "itleavesus withnoone to be" (38).
by"moralluck"incapacitates,
14 Amelie
a usefultaxonomy
in "A Literary
ofsuchterms
Oksenberg
provides
Characters,
Rorty
Postscript:
inAmelieO. Rorty,
ofPersons
ofCalifomia
Selves,Individuals,"
Persons,
ed., TheIdentities
Press,
(University
claimsthat"personhood"
isonestepshyof"selfhood"
andthat"Theideaofa person
1976),pp. 301-23.Rorty
is theidea ofa unified
centerofchoiceand action,theunitof legaland theological
responsibility.
Having
liable."On theotherhand,"Sincetheychoosefrom
theirnatures
chosen,a personacts,andso is actionable,
orarechosenbytheirstories,
neither
characters
norfigures
needto be equippedwitha will,notto mention
a
freewill"(309).
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92
LEE CLARK
feelings about the "self"?our
our sense of the "character"
In other words,
own
as well
as others'?are
that finds itself acting
we construct
a sense
MITCHELL
grafted onto
in the world.
of the subjective
self from some-
thing more than the actions we perform, which makes it relatively easy
to believe that the self stands largely free of circumstance.
The realists,
in fact, called
to moral account
tingently their own.
those whose
Yet the naturalists
actions
so fully denied
seemed
only conthe possibility of
excluded
the very
that they effectively
any release from circumstance
of
the
in
and
the
of
self;
category
process,
they made all questions
intention and subjectivity seem irrelevant to an examination
of character
and action.
They may not have rejected the realists'
felt about what he did, but they accorded
a person
particular
lemma
needed
For them,
significance.
one
differed little from another's
to define
a
person
was
concern
those
person's
with how
feelings
moral
no
di-
anguished
for prunes, since all they
of actions.
particular
sequence
craving
a
that is, reminded realism that our reasons for believing in
Naturalism,
a self are of a different order from our reasons for believing in character.
And when
persons are looked at in this latter way, the issue of respon?
becomes
sibility
merely a part of the subjective
language of the self. In
the objective
of character,
it exists only as the paradox
of
language
moral
The
luck.
reason
the issue of the self seems
Fire" is precisely because
must somehowexist?this,
the larger issue of how
less deterministic.
The
man and
so compelling
in "To Build a
narrator both assume the category
despiteclearcontraryevidence.
dictate accounts,
assumptions
Which
raises
both more and
relation
of self to character,
in other words,
matches the connection
that exists between our most basic assumptions
and our contrasting recognition of what is logically necessary?connections
like those
between
or be?
obtaining
causality and contingency,
events. No matter, for example,
that the recognition
was old long before Hume dismissed causality as mere custom; we keep
from contingency.
being surprised by the need to derive consequence
tween
plots and
When
we attempt to read narrative as mere chronicle of events, we are
forced to the realization
that "sequence
without [its]
goes nowhere
Thus torecall Forster'ssentence,
doppelganger,
orshadow,
causality."15
"The king died, and then the queen died of grief," we assume that the
15 Frank
"Secretsand
Narrative
Critical
Kermode,
VII(1980),83-84.Forafullerdiscussion,
Sequence,"
Inquiry,
see hisTheSenseofan Ending:
Studiesin theTheory
ofFiction
(Oxford
Press,1967),p. 139. See
University
also pp. 18, 30, 48-51,63-64,89.
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LONDON'S
"TO
BUILD
93
A FIRE"
two are married to each
other and that her grief was due to his death.16
are neither stated nor necessary is less striking than
the sheer power of our interpretive impulse, which suggests how texts
some interpretations more readily than they do others?
can encourage
That the conclusions
whether
of plots, causality,
or even
of selves.
Insofar as people are largely disposed
to their behavior,
tions seem unrelated
against those whose deliberathe naturalists began with a
very few other writers have been willing to accept. That may
explain why the corridors of literary history are jammed with characters
acting in accord with their wills, while only a handful wander through
who inhabit deterministic
universes.
We habitually
extend to others
handicap
we have assumed for ourselves and imagine for them similar
capacities
autonomous
selves able to choose,
then act responsibly.17
Yet the
naturalists'
possibility
them to deny any such free-standing
compelled
metaphysics
and, in the process, to dismiss both intention and subjectivity
as irrelevant to either character
orevent.
That radical dismissal
continues
to defy the expectations
of most readers, who project undetermined
selves onto almost any kind of fictional character. And it was precisely
to forestall so habitual
an impulse that the naturalists devised
such
contorted
fictive strategies.
aside, then, we can now see how radically
Superficial characteristics
naturalism differs from realism?and
see it most dramatically
at their
critical
Given the assumption
junctures.
lead to self-definition, it is understandable
in scenes
that choices
and
actions
that realist crises should
do
come
in a weighing of altemative
actions and con?
Huck's
decision
to "go to hell," for example,
or Silas
sequences.
or
Isabel
Archer's
before
the
Lapham's
night-long struggle,
vigil
dying
fire: these famous moments in American realism define the self in terms
of choice
of deliberation,
and
Yet action does not immediately
follow
responsibility.
from the choices that are made in these scenes, suggesting that respon?
sible choice might better be conceived
in terms of restraintfrom action.18
16 E. M. Forster,
oftheNovel(1927; rpt.Harcourt,
Aspects
Brace,Jovanovich,
1955),p. 86. SeymourChatman
has exploredtheseissueslucidlyin bothStoryand Discourseand in "Towarda Theory
of Narrative,"
New
VI (1974),306.
Literary
History,
17 Thisideahasalso been
developedbyNagel,pp. 37-38.
theserealist
Mypointhereis notthatactionsfailto ensuefrom
crisesofconscience,
butthatas crises,
form
therejection
ofspecific
actions.Whichis to saythateach character
theytakedramatic
refuses
through
thecourseofactionheorshehascontemplated
thatitself
(thatis,willsnottodo),a refusal
confirms
their
moral
worth.Catherine
a negative
offers
formulation
in her
Belseyinadvertently
bywhichto approachnaturalism
claimthat"Classicrealism
tendstooffer
as the'obvious'basisofitsintelligibility
theassumption
thatcharacter,
unified
and coherent,
is thesourceofaction.Subjectivity
is a major?perhaps
themajor?theme
ofclassic
realism."
See Critical
Practice
(London:Methuen
Press,1980),p. 73.
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LEE CLARK
94
naturalist
After all,
motives
unable
They
and
characters
desires;
to refrain when
lack
conflicting
wills,
act out of a full constellation
also
of
only in being
they differ from realist characters
action
for
a
is present.
given
everything required
that might serve to constrain their
Sister
Carrie resists impulse no more
energies.
or S. Behrman, and McTeague
hovering over Trina
in other
emotional
MITCHELL
than Henry Fleming
in the dentist's chair
words,
fumbling at the safe door only
exemplifies this inability to deflect desire. Burning one's hands for a fire
man responds auunnamed
suggests panic, not volition, as London's
of seared hands, frozen body. His
tomatically to the simple opposition
or Hurstwood
of the possibility of calm restraint undercuts
inability even to conceive
to act predictany sense of agency we might have. The very compulsion
since
to
from
a
self
us
him,
any "self" as traattributing
ably prevents
ditionallyunderstoodneversimplyreactstoinnerorouterconstraints.
to the external world also suggests why
This absolute responsiveness
our interest in naturalist characters ends with the text. In James's The
we continue to ask some form of the
Portrait of a Lady, for example,
"What will she do?" Or rather, we
with which we began:
question
it is she happens to decide, knowing
it will both change and confirm
that as her actions have throughout,
or Dreiser's
her. If we cannot imagine the same of Norris' Vandover,
wonder
how Isabel will do whatever
naturalism
Boat," it is because
journalist in "TheOpen
such interest. Our attention turns to the fictional worlds
Carrie, orCrane's
ever subverts
into which
characters
not to selves
are absorbed,
that stand somehow
of those worlds. The ending of "To Build a Fire" illustrates
independent
this nicely, as the man drifts into a sleep of death: "He did not belong
with himself any more, for even then he was out of himself, standing
with the boys and looking at himself in the snow. It certainly was cold,
was his thought" (97). At that moment of release, the categories of both
and self are exploded,
along
and responsibility.
tions as negligence
character
with such subsidiary considerarealist
Refuting the customary
of the body with the will, London finally decenters the self;
and "his"
it through divisions between
he dissipates
"he"s, "himself's,
conflation
desire fully into the world. Of course,
thereby at last displaces
actually to free oneself from desire is possible only by release from the
results in death.
physical body, which necessarily
and
V
Among other things, then, naturalism reveals that the conflict between
and free will is part of an ongoing tension in our views
determinism
Both views seem true, yet mutually exclusive,
about human behavior.
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LONDON'S
since
"TO
A FIRE"
BUILD
95
only explain events by tending to explain
the self. Free will has the effect, that is, of rescuing the self from
causal
away
the events
necessity
can
it engages;
determinism absorbs agency into the
conversely,
seem
world, making any distinction between the self and circumstance
If neither concept can dislodge the other, they nonetheless
to disappear.
novel's changing claims, by
offer a structure for the nineteenth-century
the
shift
see
from
Romance
allowingusto
through Realism to Naturalism
as a transition between the two views: that is, from the supreme empowinto realms
self, to its gradual dissolution
ering of an uncircumscribed
in terms
of sheer event.19 Or to consider literary history representatively,
of its major characters:
evolved into
Manfred, Ahab, and Hollingsworth
who in turn were
Dorothea
Brooke, Isabel Archer, and Silas Lapham,
Gervaise
White
and
Jennie Gerhardt.
by
supplanted
Coupeau,
Fang,
who had been
Characters
ties and class
Gulliver-like
The
knots were
among
naturalists
as relatively unconstrained
by social
bound
down
the
century,
gradually
through
imagined
the Lilliputians.
themselves
would
probably
not have
recognized
so
of their handling of character,
and certainly few
showed any interest in the possibilities
of systematic philosophy.20
Yet
determinist
constructed
models
and
succeeded
iconoclastithey
tight
abstract
a definition
cally, by inverting the strategies implicit in realism's structuring of the
self. They uniformly rejected Howells'
smiling average, of course, but
their revolt entailed far more than simply the introduction into fiction
of stupider characters, or more squalid subjects, or less optimistic plots.
Such commonplaces
of literary history ignore the more radical reversals
that determinism
and thereby suggest that naturalism was
generated
little other than a tedious
trary, the movement
premise?a
variety
rehearsal
evinced
that belies
of realist possibilities.
a remarkable
On the con-
variety from its singular
set of principles,
whether
any single
or
thematic, structural,
stylistic.
Indeed, that forms part of the problem, since any characteristic claims
for a naturalist mode must fail to reveal the idiosyncracies
that make
19 Whether
ornoteither
interest
liesinthecash
concepthappenstopersuade(orcoulddo),ourcontinuing
valueofoneortheother:Whatisachievedbythoseso inclined?
Without
or
realists
beingconvinced
byeither
we needto understand
how theirconvictions
derivedfroma nexusof expectations?personal,
naturalists,
andcultural.
Andthatmight
leadustoaskwhytherealists,
institutional,
historical,
proclaimingthemid-nineteenth
as theirown,placedsucha premium
on individual
on theissueofdeliberate
century
responsibility,
choice,
andconsidered
actionincommunities
thatwereseenincreasingly
to constrain
Or again,whydid
possibility.
their
thenaturalists,
foreclose
suchpossibilities
as suchlargescholarly
successors,
altogether?
Important
questions
are,however,
theystart
gameinotherbrushthanwe arebeating.
20 FewAmerican
hadmorethana nodding
withformal
and
naturalists,
certainly,
acquaintance
metaphysics,
their
rareexcursions
intothosestrange
seasevidence
enthusiasm
toooften
attheexpense
oflogic.
landlubberly
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96
particular narratives naturalistic.
ciearly seem misguided?those
At least some
however,
criticisms,
now
characters,
say,
attacking mechanical
from
these
Far
or
liabilities,
repetition,
disjunctive
syntax.
actively generate the narrative power of "To Build a Fire," unsettling
of agency by distorting customary linguistic usage.21
our conceptions
or excessive
What
don's
might otherwise
story, negligence
have
appeared
excused
problematic?in
the case
repetitiously?emerges
of Lon?
as intricately
with these assumptions.
Trapping a man physically, linguissucceeds
and
the
finally in ensnaring the reader.
textually,
story
tically,
London, of course, no more than other naturalists realized the extent
connected
to which
creating
showed
words
events.
ultimately trap us, shaping interpretations and thereby
vision of the self, he
Yet by inverting his predecessors'
what determinism
involve, and what living
might specifically
in such a world might actually mean. Isaiah Berlin once claimed that,
the illusion of free will: "I
even if we wanted to, we could not escape
is necessarily false, only that
do not here wish to say that determinism
we neither speak nor think as if it could be true, and that it is difficult,
what our picture of the world
to conceive
impossible,
perhaps
it."22 Difficult, maybe. But if Berlin
would be if we seriously believed
had read London, he might have agreed, not impossible.
and
Thisis notmeantto suggest
that"To Builda Fire"is a "representative"
naturalist
other
text,although
andtropes.
examplesmaywellshareitspatterns
characters
whosewillsarevoidedthrough
Theytoomayoffer
thecircumstances
oftheir
whoseselvesareabsorbed
intoa textual
worlds,
forinstance,
ofthe
Think,
language.
unnamed
characters
inCrane's"TheOpenBoat"andTheRedBadgeofCourage,
theCarries
andSolonBarnes,
theSwedein Nebraska,
andwheatfarmers
incentral
California.
22 Isaiah
Historical
TheAugusteComte
Berlin,
Memorial
Trust
Inevitability,
Lecture,
May12, 1953(London:
Oxford
Press,1954),p. 33.
University
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