To Build a Fire

I honestly can not stand stories like Jack London's "To Build a Fire." It has nothing to do with who the author is. It's just the fact that the story line is the same. Some hot shot thinks he is going to be original and go out into the wilderness. He thinks he's going to be different and somehow have the ability to control the wilderness despite what everyone else tells him. He's arrogant and some weird God complex. He ignores what everyone tells him and that ends up being the death of him. It doesn't matter who the character is, or how well written the piece is, I still can't stand these stories. Because they all end the same and happen the same.
I'm not going to deny that Jack London hasn't done a beautiful job of writing this piece. There were quite a few things that I thought were brilliant in this story. But that doesn't stop the fact that I really don't like the story line, and I think that's the point.
I don't even know the main character's name and I hate him. I hate his arrogance. I hate how stupid he is. I hate how he thinks he can conquer pure wilderness despite all the warnings. I hate how he treats the dog. I think the thing I hate the most is the terrible name he gives to humans.
There is a huge comparison between the dog and this unknown man in this story. The dog through the whole thing is loyal to the man, but knows that in order to survive they need to keep warm. The dog knows the importance of fire. "The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to brrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air" (652). The man, on the other hand, just continually thinks about how cold it is. The man doesn't have any other thoughts other than getting to his guy friends as quickly as possible and the mere fact that it is cold. "Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and that he had never experienced such cold" (652). He doesn't think about fire until it's too late.
He doesn't show any compassion to the dog at all. I'm not even sure why he brought it along in the first place. "[T]here was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash" (654). The only time he thinks about the dog is when he knows he's going to die and is going to kill the dog in order to try to save himself. That part made me really mad. It was the human's dumb fault for getting himself in this situation. He doesn't listen to any of the warning signs, or even the dog. If he would have took the time and the precautions, he probably would have lived. Or, if he would have even been a bit nicer to the dog, the dog would have put in an effort to try to save the man.
The man in this piece gives such a bad light to humans. It shows all our bad qualities, especially compared to the dog. It shows our selfishness, our arrogance, our ideal that we are better than everything.