The stories I am going to discuss about are: “Wine on the Desert,” by Max Brand, “To Build a Fire,” by Jack London, and “The Birds,” by Daphne Du Maurice. These stories deal with the conflict of human versus nature. This paper focuses more on what the stories are and how I interpreted them. Other things that are Included In this paper are the summaries, comparing, and contrasting. What I’m trying to show with these Is the vulnerability of men when confronted with nature. The story, “To Build a Fire,” Is about an Ignorant man who struggled to get warm In the cold In order to live.
He was Ignorant because he thought he was better off doing whatever he wanted to go, resulting to a conflict. The man tried many ways In attempt to get warm. After many of the attempts, he finally gave up. He was unsuccessful and accepted his fate. The story, “Wine on the Desert,” is about a man named Durance who tries to outrun the law because he killed someone. In order to get away from them, he destroyed his friend’s water tanks and also destroyed his friend’s vineyard doing so. For revenge, his “friend” gave him a canteen full of wine for his Journey in the desert.
Durance found out about it while he was in the desert and was afraid he wouldn’t make it. Durance was right and he died because of the heat and of thirst. The story, “The Birds,” is about a man named Nat who discovers something unusual about the birds coming into town. The birds were acting out of control and were harming and killing people. Nat tries to protect his family by boarding up the house and keeping them out. He tries to warn people, but was unsuccessful. At the end it seemed like he was the victor in the story, but the birds pulled through which showed otherwise.
Nat stopped trying to defend his family and accepted their fate. These three stories show that the men were unsuccessful. Nat and the man in the snow was the men who really attempted to live and they too were the ones who accepted their fate. Durance neither attempted a lot to live nor accepted his fate. “Wine on the Desert” and “To Build a Fire” was somewhat similar In the way that the characters had done something they were not suppose to do and that nature had punished them for doing so. The thing the authors are trying to show about these stories of human versus nature
Is that you should not mess with nature. They are trying to say that nature Is something you can not fight because It Is somewhat of an Invisible force. Since It Is an Invisible force, you can not really physical fight It Like you can with another person. This made the people in these stories more vulnerable. They are also trying to show how the conditions of nature can drive a person to do almost anything in order for something bad like Durance had done. Overall, these stories show many ideas and morals if you can interpret the story for how you see it, or Just take the story the way it is.
