The main central theme of London's "To Build a Fire," is man versus nature. The unnamed man goes into the forest alone with just a native dog hoping to survive, ending up not making it through the harsh winter wind and ending up dying. " a double movement - downward toward disintegration and death and upward toward reintegration and life, but life greatly enriched" (Peterson, 15). when he actually gets the fire lit, is soon accompanied by the greatest downward shift when the fire is put out because of the snow falling on the fire. But if the man would have just placed the fire in a more open spot this wouldn't have happened, instead the man thinking instinctively instead of thinking out of the box, places it under the tree where the branches are easily located and the man does not have to carry them to a further location. The man tried to light another fire in a different location, but it was too late the cold had taken him over and his hands were too numb to be able to light the match to start the fire. If the man would have just thought about what would happen after he lit the fire and the hot steam would start to melt the snow located on the tree above, this would not have happened and he might have survived through the crude winter. Because of this action he let nature take over him.