Building a Connection We've all had those days when it feels like the universe wants to kill us, or at least maim us psychologically. A series of trivial irritants accumulate into a seemingly unmanageable and insurmountable mountain, completely derailing any attempt at productivity... and in the midst of this one of many frustrating, yet mundane scenarios, there is the nagging doubt that it's all for nothing . It occurs to us vaguely that this is just the interval between being born and becoming food for worms, that we are all just matter and energy that will eventually decompose and contribute to new configurations of matter and energy. It also occurs to us that this random rearrangement of atoms will also fall under the gaze of an omnipresent: god? Force? Being alien? Or, perhaps more distressing, we are reminded that the gaze is nothing more than an apathetic void. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Such contemplations are the nature writer's job to unpack. Authors like Jack London and Stephen Crane, whose respective short stories “To Build a Fire” and “The Open Boat” exemplify the genre, seek to chase this truth to its logical and frightening conclusion: we are nothing but matter and energy with intent . , and that alone does not entitle us to a nurturing and benevolent universe or an understanding God. While both stories contribute to the genre by depicting humans' relationship with their environment as inherently one-sided, the authors clearly subscribe to different interpretations of that relationship. London goes to great lengths to construct a conflict based solely on biological and practical questions, while Crane delves deeper into the psyche of humans who look death in the eye and meekly ask, “Why me? Why now?" Although achieved primarily through the use of overtly hostile environments, the stories' themes are also supported by the repetition of key phrases that establish these authors' differing opinions. In “To Build a Fire,” for example, the thought repeated by the protagonist “it was certainly cold” brings with it first and foremost an observation of empirical facts: the extensive thought process that precedes this statement is a blasé observation, which “made no impression on the man” because his concern is not so much “in the meaning” of the information as in how it immediately applies to him – in this case, simply as an obstacle (809). Here, the appearance of “it was certainly cold” is only a reflection bored with his position in the Yukon, not an instinctive fear rising beneath his civilized mind to warn him, "[t]hat there should be something more than this was a thought that had never crossed his mind " (809); the protagonist, this inexperienced chechaquo, considers this environment nothing more than a passing obstacle that he will surely overcome; so surely, in fact, that the thought of his death on the tundra, and the fear that comes with it, doesn't even occur to him at this juncture. Compare this to the final repetition of the sentence, where he appears only a few lines before learning that the man has frozen to death, and that he does so with a certain sense of willful resignation, insisting that the "old master" who had warned him of the foolishness of his actions he was always right (818). The man no longer sees any point in fighting and seems to succumb gracefully to the cold. This establishes a sense of responsibility, according to Donald Pizer. In his review of Lee Clark Mitchell's book Determined Fictions: American Literary Naturalism, Pizer rejects Mitchell's idea of ​​a universal determinism that does not allow for realopportunities for human “free will”; in the case of the London chechaquo, Mitchell insists that this lack of action drives the man to freezing to death. Pizer, however, argues that London's “constant attachment of guilt and therefore moral responsibility” to the intrepid protagonist clearly supports human agency rather than human helplessness (260). Man has exceeded the limits of his biological limits and rightly suffers the consequences. London attributes the chechaquo's death to the man's lack of awareness, his lack of "imagination" that could have intervened and alerted him to his fatal "can't-have-it" attitude that ineffectively defies the hostile Yukon winter. Man's death, London suggests, could have easily been avoided if he had only tapped into his basic survival instincts rather than his purely human desire to conquer an environment hostile to the purely human desire to obtain arbitrarily significant wealth. Rejecting the instinctive understanding that humans must bend their will, contort their imagination, to the environment and not vice versa, the chechaquo illustrates London's belief that, while death is obviously inevitable, misplaced arrogance, lack of respect and lack of intuition the imagination that recognizes things worthy of respect exacerbates the process. Crane also illustrates the inevitability of death in “The Open Boat”; however, more than London, Crane insists that respect and a willingness to be held accountable for failure amount to nothing when the Universe is so clearly indifferent to human life, or all life. Unlike “To Build a Fire,” Crane's tale revolves around characters trapped in a situation where seemingly only divine intervention can provide relief. The chechaquo consciously ignores the experience of his companions, but the shipwrecked crew of "The Open Boat" find themselves in the eye of danger despite their combined knowledge, experience and caution. The crew's repeated sentiment of "If I'm going to drown... why... was I allowed to get this far...?" (784) suddenly becomes much more poignant; suggests a deep-seated sense of injustice towards the situation that, based on their collective expertise, should not have occurred. Here, even with the presence of wonder, caution and presumably “the imagination” that London's protagonist lacks, they are rendered insignificant by a universe that sees neither right nor wrong, skilled or unskilled, sentient nor completely instinctive. Furthermore, the crew's feelings about drowning after “making it this far” parallel all human experiences when facing their own mortality. Because this feeling is collective ("As far as men's musings...might thus be phrased") rather than individual, and yet no more or less significant than an individual's pleas, Crane presents this density of desperation as entirely impotent and objectively useless (784). The mere presence of a passionate struggle or seething anger cannot – indeed, cannot – impress an indifferent Universe. There is no assignment of responsibility in the case of these four crew members, and this lack of responsibility, combined with their frenetic and diligent struggle, manifests as a profound sense of injustice. Here, Crane suggests, the will to live does not give the right to life. No matter how “good” we act or how willingly we obey instinct, we all die in the end… and in the end, it is no great God who takes care of our death. However, the lack of an empathetic universe is not a reason why beings.