Stories have different settings, plots, tones, themes, and moods. These things make a story. These are the things that impact how a character would act in the story. One short story where a character was impacted is in the short story “To Build a Fire”, written by Jack London. The setting of the story was set in the Klondike of the Yukon Territory of 1896. The day was cold and dark, the trail was mysterious, strange, and weird. This causes the Man in the story to face many problems. Settings of a story can impact a character physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The short story impacted the Man physically. As the day grew colder, the Man received less feeling in his body. His face, legs, feet were all numb. Physically the man couldn’t do anything. “He noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he noted…
In the beginning of the story, he was arrogant and didn’t care about what the weather was like, even when the old timer told him that when it’s fifty below, travel with a partner. “The mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all — made no impression on the man”(1). During the middle of the story, he found himself getting frustrated. “He had never experienced such cold, walking he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose, and the following instant the end of his nose went numb”(3). Soon he started to realize that he should’ve listened to the old timer. Towards the end, when he finally grasped that he was going to freeze to death, he was first fearful of dying, but then panic started to set in. Which made him run around in a frenzy to keep his warmth. But after a while, he comprehended that, that wasn’t going to help, so he calmed himself. “He was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With his new found peace if mind came the first of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to…
