Read this passage from "To Build a Fire." What is ironic about the man's situation?

It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.

"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.

Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

It is dangerously cold in that part of the world.

The man will live to tell the tale about his near-death experience.

The old timer had warned the man about the cold.

Once the man accepts dying, he becomes comfortable.

Question

Steve Cardenas

English

2 October, 14:46

Read this passage from "To Build a Fire." What is ironic about the man's situation?

It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.

"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.

Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

It is dangerously cold in that part of the world.

The man will live to tell the tale about his near-death experience.

The old timer had warned the man about the cold.

Once the man accepts dying, he becomes comfortable.

+3

Answers (2)

Know the Answer?

Roselyn · Answer 1

C seems the most plausible:The old timer had warned the man about the cold.

We can see this in the passage from: "'You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek."

Madelynn Lang · Answer 2

Once the man accepts dying, he becomes comfortable.

Explanation:

Irony is a rhetorical device in which an event that appears, on the surface, to be a certain way, in fact differs radically from what is actually the case. In this excerpt, we learn that the man is freezing to death. Normally, we would expect that dying would bring a lot of suffering or stress to a person. However, in this passage, we learn that the man actually becomes more comfortable and happy as he approaches death.