Dramatic irony describes a situation in which the reader has information or knowledge that character in the story does not have. Dramatic irony can...

London uses dramatic irony to great effect in his story "To Build a Fire." In the story, a man is walking from one camp to the next through the Alaskan wilderness, accompanied only by a dog, in extreme cold. The man thinks it might be more than fifty degrees below zero; in fact, London's narrator tells us in paragraph 6, "it was not merely colder than 50 below zero; it was colder than 60 below,...

London uses dramatic irony to great effect in his story "To Build a Fire." In the story, a man is walking from one camp to the next through the Alaskan wilderness, accompanied only by a dog, in extreme cold. The man thinks it might be more than fifty degrees below zero; in fact, London's narrator tells us in paragraph 6, "it was not merely colder than 50 below zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero. Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were 107 degrees of frost."  By telling his reader that it is far colder than the man thought it was, London is simultaneously highlighting how "green" the man is and creating suspense: the reader knows that the man is in a life-threatening situation; even the dog "was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was no time for traveling." As the story progresses, more and more is made of the difference between what the reader knows and what the man does not; the man's analysis of his situation often is limited to his thinking "It certainly is cold!" As it becomes clear that the man will die, the dramatic irony of the story causes the reader to feel pity for the man and also becomes the basis for an object lesson on man's insignificance in the face of the raw power of nature.