Elements of Naturalism in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and “The Law of Life”

Abstract

This research examines two famous short stories of Jack London “The Law of Life” and “To Build a Fire” through the lens of naturalism. Naturalism is the representation of the harsh realities of life in a scientific way of objectivity. The movement of naturalism started in the late nineteenth century and believes that human beings are bounded by their surrounding environment, heredity, social obligations, and their pre-determined fate. The main aim of the present investigation is to highlight the naturalistic elements in the selected short stories by the mean of qualitative analysis. The conclusion shows that the short stories are enriched with naturalistic elements i.e. struggle of man against the indifferent nature for his survival, hopelessness, fate and determinism, social obligations, and other naturalistic elements.