And yet, while it does not concern itself with the condition of the man’s soul, the story does seem to concern itself with the fact of his soul, insofar as his soul becomes the subject of the story’s final paragraphs, wherein the man’s thoughts are loosed from their ‘ordinary’ function, and we encounter the statement that “he did not belong with himself any more” and that “he was outside of himself.”
diary /
But, in other words, if we maintain that perspective for now, the story does not concern itself with the condition of the man’s soul, because the condition of his soul is not so egregious that it perpetuates the story’s drama. (Equally true, I suppose, is the fact that his soul is not in some heightened state of sanctity, though I can think of few stories where such a description can be applied to any main character, as art seems to lose traction when its subjects have arrived at an inner tranquility, or peace).
diary /
(To view the story as I have described is to employ a Christian perspective, though the story does not necessitate such a perspective in the reader, and can still be affecting without it).
diary /
It is true, for instance, that he ignores the advice of the old man from Sulphur Creek (about the dangers of traveling without a human companion, in such temperatures), and that he shows little regard for his dog (which he treats in a utilitarian way). But this conduct is less a sin, I think, than an imperfection, or a mistake; and even if it were a sin, it would not be a very grave one. A venial sin, perhaps, but not a mortal sin; his soul would not be imperiled because of it. Or, anyway, not because of it alone.
diary /
I say “to an extent” because regret in that story is not enormous, for the man is so ordinary that he seems not to have within him the capacity to do things that are enormous in their consequence. He is merely careless, and somewhat arrogant; his death is a result of his imprudence in the face of nature, and is not connected (at least not in the episode of his life to which we are privy) to some deed from his past that might have arisen from, say, a collusion with the spirit of evil, which later would’ve preyed on his conscience.
diary /
The reader wonders, I think, whether the man’s mind at that moment is playing tricks on him (whether his brain, as its functioning begins to cease, is producing the images he ‘sees’) or whether some aspect of his person that is eternal, and moral (his soul, for example), is reaching for some final configuration, and, in leaving him, is revealing to him an avenue of the future that embodies, to an extent, his regret.
diary /
Meaning, he seems to be having what is sometimes referred to as an ‘out-of-body experience.’
diary /
In that story, as the protagonist is freezing to death in the Yukon, he sees, or imagines that he sees, himself and his friends discovering his own body, on the trail where he has finally sat down, too numb to go any further in the direction of the camp he has been trying to reach.
diary /
What do you think happens to us when we die? I was reading recently the story To Build a Fire, by Jack London, and this question came to my mind.