Loneliness and displacement : a postmodern Geocritical reading of Jack London's "To Build A Firei"

Abstract EN

Within the theoretical framework of geocriticism, this paper examines the physical setting in London's "To Build A Fire" through defining its fictional and real spaces.

It investigates the relationship between the physical space of nature and the mental space of the main protagonist.

Though a spatio-temporal analysis is followed here as the method of research, the researcher refutes the essential inseparability of time and space, arguing that a spatial perspective predominates a postmodern society fretting from anxiety, loneliness, fragmentation, detachment, alienation and displacement.

The postmodern geocritical approach is applied to Jack London's "To Build A Fire" as this short story discusses elements which are germane to geocritical studies such as geographical boundaries, transgression, space, place, body, movements, life and death.

Such elements are brought together within the journey motif, a widespread spatial schema, which dominates the course of the story.

Not only does London use the journey as the traditional symbol of a quest, but he also employs it to structure his story.

Though critical approaches tend to investigate or evaluate specific aspects in literature, they ignore the role of space which works both as part of the setting and as an effective and interactive element in the development of action in any literary work.

The paper deduces London's disillusionment of the socio-economic changes that take place in America.

London's geographic factors in "To Build A Fire" reflect the dominantly vanishing social economic changes of the place it is set in.