"To Build A Fire" -Jack London

“To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a fine example of the use of flashbacks as a way of foreshadowing. The first flashback seen in the story is just when the man is sitting down to have his lunch. “That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country. And he had laughed at him at the time!” (118). In this flashback the man is coming to terms with that he had been wrong about the cold. About this time the man makes the mistake of trying to eat his lunch without first lighting a fire. The man at Sluphur Creek had been correct, and this is where the reader finds that these flashbacks hold information as well as warning, the beginning threads of foreshadowing. Soon after the man began his journey again disaster broke. Wet up to his knees in more than fifty below he knew his time was short. Keeping his calm he lit a fire. “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 must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below” (119). This quote shows another warning, one that the man does not take, but the reader can see an opening to a life and death situation. The flashback again foreshadows that soon the luck is going to turn, and the man is going to wish he would have heeded the advice before it was too late. I feel that through London’s use of flashbacks he creates a much deeper story, as well as one that keeps the reader engaged as to why the old-timer at Sulphur Creek has such importance.