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Similes
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Imagination in Death:
"To Build a Fire" ends on an ironic note, with the dying man vividly imagining various scenes:
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying in the snow. 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... He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Spruce Tree:
The moment when a pile of snow falls and blots out the man's fire is the most dramatic and climactic moment of the story. It is also an example of situational irony—at the exact moment the man believes himself to be safe and begins to relax, disaster strikes.
Unlock with LitCharts A+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. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree—an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Accident:
Things begin to go downhill for the man the moment he falls into a hidden pool of water, and this moment is an excellent example of situational irony.
Unlock with LitCharts A+And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through.
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