Often time’s people wonder about their place in the world and if their actions affect the lives of themselves or the people around them. Jack London 's “To Build a Fire” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's “The Yellow Wallpaper" both have characters facing obstacles either by their doing or just unfortunate circumstances and how it affects themselves and the environment around them. In “To Build a Fire” the focus is on a man who is hiking a trail in extremely cold weather in order to meet up with his friends. Being confident in his abilities, he and his companion dog begin the hike but his actions and how he perceives Mother Nature get him into trouble. The other story “The Yellow Wallpaper” deals with a mother who just recently gave birth and
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During his hike up the trail the narrator faces many obstacles along the way such as his fingers becoming numb and falling into knee deep water and essentially freezing his lower half. Immediately he begins to build a fire but he unwittingly builds it underneath a tree with snow falling off the branches. Realizing his mistake the narrator begins to understand that even with all his brainpower there was no way he would be able to think his way out of this situation. “The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm.”(1053). Even though the man went about these situations with supreme confidence, one little mistake in the cruel world of nature can decide whether you live or die. While he is sitting there calmly it shows that he is beginning to comprehend that he is going to die out in the snow and he is coming to terms with that fact. In the sprawling abyss of nature the man begins to understand that even with all the knowledge in the world being at the mercy of the environment can be very unpredictable and that all his preparation cannot beat the elements of …show more content…
Being in a house that her husband believes will help her actually furthers her spiral into depression and eventually into further illness. Even when the narrator is trying to get her own feelings across she is brushed aside by males like in this passage. "If a physician of high standing, and one 's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do?"(792). The female narrator is shown to not have any power when it comes to the word of her husband or any male. In this passage she is shown to just accept the fact that she will not be able to tell her husband or anyone else that she is actually fine and nothing is wrong with her. There is no real power for her to have in this relationship and she just resigns to that fact like a lot of women of that era. Even in her small confined space in this house she resides in she still has no control of her life or the environment she stays
During his hike up the trail the narrator faces many obstacles along the way such as his fingers becoming numb and falling into knee deep water and essentially freezing his lower half. Immediately he begins to build a fire but he unwittingly builds it underneath a tree with snow falling off the branches. Realizing his mistake the narrator begins to understand that even with all his brainpower there was no way he would be able to think his way out of this situation. “The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm.”(1053). Even though the man went about these situations with supreme confidence, one little mistake in the cruel world of nature can decide whether you live or die. While he is sitting there calmly it shows that he is beginning to comprehend that he is going to die out in the snow and he is coming to terms with that fact. In the sprawling abyss of nature the man begins to understand that even with all the knowledge in the world being at the mercy of the environment can be very unpredictable and that all his preparation cannot beat the elements of …show more content…
Being in a house that her husband believes will help her actually furthers her spiral into depression and eventually into further illness. Even when the narrator is trying to get her own feelings across she is brushed aside by males like in this passage. "If a physician of high standing, and one 's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do?"(792). The female narrator is shown to not have any power when it comes to the word of her husband or any male. In this passage she is shown to just accept the fact that she will not be able to tell her husband or anyone else that she is actually fine and nothing is wrong with her. There is no real power for her to have in this relationship and she just resigns to that fact like a lot of women of that era. Even in her small confined space in this house she resides in she still has no control of her life or the environment she stays