A fantastic short story, with no wasted pages, or even a wasted sentence. In it, London crafts a story about the arrogance of man, and the brutality of nature. His writing about Survival is superb, and it builds and builds to an inevitable climax that is both expected, and somehow shocking at the same time. ( )

I haven’t previously read anything by Jack London.



I didn’t like this story, about a man making a trip in the snow at a very low temperature, fifty degrees below zero, he thought. Actually, it was seventy-five below zero.



The unnamed man had his dog with him, a husky, which didn’t have a name either.



It was dangerous to walk this trail alone because of the extreme cold.



The author tells us that the man’s problem was that he lacked imagination.



The dog knew it “was no time for traveling”. It was wiser than the man.



The man knew that sometimes he had to light a fire in order to warm himself, and he did at least once.



A few mishaps occurred and, finally, he was unable to light the necessary fire because of his frozen, numb hands.



I lost sympathy for the man when he considered killing the dog so he could put his hands inside the corpse in order to thaw them.



The man had apparently undertaken this hazardous trip on his own to prove to himself that he was a real man. “Any man who was a man would travel alone.”



The story did not end well.



It was well told, absolutely – I just didn’t like the theme or the man himself. ( )

Oh my goodness, I have not felt the cold like this since I watched Dr. Zhivago and wanted to help get the ice out of Omar Shariff's beard. Fantastic descriptions that make you shiver with cold and fear. ( )

Three tales of endurance and adventure that range from the Klondike to the islands of the Pacific

Un uomo e un cane si spostano tra le nevi del Klondike, combattendo una battaglia senza scampo contro il gelo che li stringe in una morsa. Poche pagine che bastano per caricarci di angoscia, fino ad arrivare al finale tragico ma ineluttabile.
Il tema è uno dei più cari a London: l'arroganza dell'uomo e la sua piccolezza dinanzi alla natura, non matrigna come sosteneva Leopardi ma maestosamente indifferente.
Non è un caso se a salvarsi sarà il cane, fin da subito molto più umile e conscio dei suoi limiti di fronte alla grandezza delle forze in gioco.
La scrittura è apparentemente semplice ma in realtà molto accurata, in grado di conferire all'opera un tono che oscilla tra il concitato e il fatalista.
Peccato che i racconti e in particolare quelli così brevi non riescano mai ad appassionarmi davvero, in questo caso poi anche trama e ambientazione non sono nelle mie corde; resta comunque un' ottima prova di scrittore. ( )