How does contextual information about the Klondike gold rush help readers understand Jack London’s story and his purpose in the excerpt from “To Build a Fire”?

It provides context and insight into the motivations, fears and actions of both the main character and the secondary characters. The best examples are the use of characters who are expert trappers and who obviously respect and fear nature due to its power of both creation and destruction. The old man repeatedly warns him against traveling alone in the cold wilderness of winter. There is also the description of the way the main character and other trappers are dressed,  with “thick German socks”.  He also advises him to pay attention to his dog and heed its warnings.

The dog character shows how ungrateful, proud and ignorant he is as the dog is trying to accompany him and assist him and he fails to heed the dog’s instinctive warnings that his course of action will inevitably lead to his demise. The falling is not only physical but symbolic as he will fall due to his hubris. The fact that both the dog and the extreme cold represent both faces of nature underscores the man’s failure to use the more benign face to his advantage, foreshadowing his later death. The dog’s ears are flattened out of submission and they mirror the psychological ears of the man who fails to listen to all the warning of other expert trappers and nature. Finally, the power of nature is made very explicit as it is typified as the winner of his losing battle with it.

To Build a Fire  - the story of the famous American writer Jack London; popular version was published in 1908.This story is a prime example of the conflict between man and nature. Jack London reflected in the story of his own life in the Yukon Territory.

The protagonist travels through one of the trails of the Yukon in a very cold day (-75 ° F / -59 ° C), accompanied by a dog. He goes on the trail along the creek, conscious of the danger of natural traps that are generated by mining underground streams, because in such a wet cold would have meant certain death. Continuing the way, the traveler sinks knee-deep in water. He recalls an old man who had warned him that no man should not travel alone on the Klondike, if the temperature is below -50 ° F (-46 ° C).Traveler gets scared and he is preparing a fire to dry their clothes and do not die from the cold.