1.

PLOT:
In terms of exposition, Jack London started the story with the revelation of the story
physical setting: an extremely cold, gray morning of severe winter in Yukon with the
absence of the sun. Travelling in such harsh physical setting are our two protagonists: a
man and a dog. In this part, the author focuses on the way he narrates and masters
foreshadowing rather than the description of the characters, thus making the readers focus
more on the setting, and only have just enough information of the characters to see a
contradiction which led to the first conflict of the story: the conflict between man and
nature. Through this part, Jack London has successfully ignited the readers’ curiosity by
giving not fully detailed but just enough description about the conflict as well as the
characters in the story.

In the next part of the story, known as rising action, the conflict of the man versus nature
was gradually raised higher and higher. It began with the incentive moment when the man
started to ignore all the precaution and got himself wet, which led to a series of rising
actions. Among those actions, there are two events that made the man face a cruel fate: the
moment when clumps of snow falling down from the trees blotted out the fire which the
man had just successfully built, and his second failed attempt to build the fire. In the process
of describing these two failures of the man, Jack London has showed the readers the change
in the man psychology, as well as gradually enhanced the conflict between the man and the
Mother Nature: The Yukon, with its extremely harsh weather and countless of
unforeseeable problems, stayed cold, indifferent and merciless, which contrasted with the
man’s burning desire and endless effort to restore his warm and survive. Reading this part,
the readers can see that the conflict is about to be pushed to its climax.

The story reached its climax when surviving became the only thing mattered to the man:
he decided to kill the dog and put his hands into its warm body to survive through the
severe weather. After all the struggle, he, however, still failed to kill the dog due to his
physical condition. “A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him.” The fear,
which was vaguely described in the exposition and built up during the raising actions,
reached its climax when all the man’s effort became useless. When he started to mindlessly
run with no aim just to relieve his emotions and desire to survive, it appeared a new conflict:
an internal conflict of the man’s desire to reach the camp with “the boys” and his negative
thoughts of a highly likely death of hypothermia. With this part, the author has succeeded
in captivating the readers’ imagination with the dramatic development of the story.

From then, as a result of falling action, the flow of the story seemed to smoothly go down.
Change after change happened to both the physical and the mental state of the man, which
resulted in his final acceptance of his coming death: the man sat down and “entertained in
his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.” He was probably humbling and
flinching because he knew that he had been relied on his own experience rather than
instinct. “You were right, old host; you were right,” this was the end of the changing
process in his mind. The man, at the beginning, ignored the old-timer’s advice, but then
kept considering it in his mind, and finally had to fully accept it. The man’s life finally
came to an end when he “drowsed off into what seemed to him the most satisfying and
comfortable sleep he had ever known.”

In charge of resolution, the story, however, did not end with the death of the man, but with
a description of the dog’s reaction to his death. The description of this part probably
conveys that the dog may not have the intellectual ability to make fire or food, but it knows
where the providers of these things are. It is claimed that instinct is far more than
intellectuality; it is not the most loyal dog, but it is a survivor. On the other hand, the story
ended when the dog groans, which might seem quite sentimental. However, the sentimental
moment was so short that it seemed not so much heartwarming as cold-hearted: no sooner
had the dog began to howl, it went forward to the camp for fire and food. Although this
kind of epilogue provides a seemingly too cold treatment to the man’s death, it is a
practically appropriate result for one underestimating the extreme of nature as his
ignorance.
 2. PLOT TECHNIQUE
Foreshadowing is a plot technique that the author uses throughout the story. In other word,
before an unlucky event, Jack London always suggests its coming with several details. The
dog’s fall for the hidden freezing trap is like a hint that the man would also fall and get his
feet wet later. One of the major points of foreshadowing is that “The old-timer had been
very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after
fifty below.” In fact, the man defied that rule and traveled alone in under fifty below. This
is another way the author foreshadows the ending of the man: he was frozen to death in the
end. Jack London foreshadows not only by describing the events but also by the way he
uses every single word, especially the word “pall”. “Pall” not only indicate the gloomy
atmosphere but also represent for a cover of a coffin, which foreshadows for the man’s
fate. Beside the “pall” as well as the description of the extreme weather, London builds up
the event gradually as well as give comments during the story, especially "The trouble with
him was that he was without imagination," which most likely prompts that the man will
encounter problems because of his ignorance.