Anxiety, suspense, hesitation and death; It's all about survival, allowing humans to push beyond their limits and see what they're truly capable of. Survival is a mix of physical, mental and emotional challenges. Although there are many stories that challenge man as to his abilities, there are two stories that show survival and challenge our dominance as human beings. Jack London's "To Build a Fire" and Arthur Gordon's "Sea Devil" are both about characters who find themselves caught in a battle between man and nature. In "To Build a Fire", the man faces freezing temperatures and in "Sea Devil", the man is pulled and carried away by a manta ray. These stories illustrate that to survive, you must always think about what to do and know that every small decision can have huge effects. Two types of survival used were mental and physical; the characters in both stories must overcome mental and physical challenges. In "To Build a Fire" he shows how not to survive and lead to his demise. An example of this is that man is very ignorant of his environment and how it can contribute to his survival or demise. The man does not think about his physical injuries and their importance. To survive, one must endure pain while taking precautions to save one, but man did not do that. It says in the text: “What were the frosty cheeks? A little painful, that's all; they were never serious. » (London 23). This quote shows how the man is unaware of the seriousness of his frosty cheeks. Ignorance of his frosted cheeks later contributes to his disappearance later in the story. This indicates that to survive you must be aware and vigilant of everything, so "To Build a Fire" shows a lack of physical survival because man is in the middle of paper......survival. Two types of survival demonstrated in these stories were physical and mental. Overall, the man from "Sea Devil" survived because he used his mental strength to come up with a plan to escape the Manta Ray. Overall, in "To Build a Fire", the man dies because he made too many mistakes due to his arrogance and overconfidence which caused him to freeze many parts of his body. body and die from the temperature. Survival allows humans to exceed their usual capabilities. Even though this is true, sometimes people take the wrong path to survival and don't survive at all. We humans think nothing can stop us, but many things can; we simply underestimate them. Humans think they are the highest, but we are not and never fully will be. Works Cited Gordon, Arthur. “Sea Devil”. Saturday Evening Post, May 1998, London, Jack. “Light a fire.” Magazine of the century. August 1908