“It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.”(p6)

The fire is always the representation of hope, warmth, nature and life. Just like what the man have  experienced before, if he was not able to build a fire immediately after his legs were being immersed, his legs would no longer exist and even his life might be threatened. When the fire is extinguished by the falling snow, it seems that the life of the man would fade away with the disappearance of the hope; meanwhile, it reflects the crucial  dependence of human beings to the nature.

2.characterization

“Once again, however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface.”(p3)

This quotation depicts the man’s attitude toward the dog and how he treated it. From the text, we are able to analyzed that the man only took dog as a tool when it came to areas with potential dangers. His behaviors were not like the other plot that the master and the dog own intimate relationship; instead, he didn’t care about the dog, which embodies a cruel, ruthless character.

3.conflict

“This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last panic.”(p10)

This is the internal conflict, which, to be more specific, belongs to the conflict between the mind and the reality. The man was feared about he had lost in the battle with the frost. He was not willing to be defeated by the nature, persuading to himself that he should be calm. Yet his frozen body did not allow him to keep going, attempting to destroy his last thought. The opposite trend forms a kind of struggle between the man’s mind and his physical ability.

"He laughed at him at the time! That showed one must not be too sure of things" When he recalled the old miner's warning not to travel alone in cold weather, he had laughed at the old miner before. This detail shows his initial arrogance, thinking that he could handle everything, further portraying his insufficient understanding of natural dangers and overconfident personality.

“But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.”This sentence shows that although this dog has no knowledge of temperature, it still has fear. It observes human actions step by step to save itself, demonstrating its strong insight.