Touchstone: Anagogical Reading of ‘To Build a Fire’

Touchstone is a great magazine, period, and if you don’t subscribe, you really should. I read every issue cover to cover and always find something to make me think and re-think what I’ve thought. For example, where else but Touchstone can you read a critique of Jack London’s short story ‘To Build a Fire’ from the traditional lens revealing the four layers of meaning? David Haddon’s purpose in ‘Never Absolute Zero’ isn’t to advocate that lens — he works pretty hard to make the point that London transcends his atheism in his art — but he opens his critique with a short review of its value:

Dr. Louise Cowan, longtime professor of literature at the University of Dallas​, taught that an analysis of a work of literature is not complete until the critic has evaluated it not only at the literal, allegorical, and moral levels, but also at the anagogic level—the critic must evaluate the work’s relation to ultimate spiritual reality. Thus, at the two highest levels, we must compare the morality and metaphysics discernable in an artist’s narrative with the moral order discernible in what C. S. Lewis called the Tao (or Natural Law) and with the order of creation revealed in Scripture.

Those of you who have Spotlight or Harry Potter’s Bookshelf or even just the posts here at HogwartsProfessor know that this sort of reading, what we call iconological criticism after Northrup Frye, is a large part of what I’m after in writing for ‘serious readers’ of popular fiction. As such Mr. Haddon’s article was a delight to read and I encourage you to read it in full. He makes his point about London’s story being evidence of a perspective greater than the materialism of his professed politics and offers a different perspective on the anagogical than I have.

First, Dr. Cowan’s sequencing of the four layers of reading has the ‘moral’ following the ‘allegorical’ rather than preceding it on the way to the sublime or anagogical summit and Mr. Haddon’s interpretation follows her lead. Though traditional — Aquinas uses this sequence, for instance, as does Dante in his request for a ‘polysemantic’ reading of the Comedia — I don’t think these authorities justify bumping a ‘moral’ or tropological’ reading over allegory.

Why not? For one thing, Aquinas’ reading (after Boethius, I suspect) is not the sequence as it was given in the original, that is, the interpretation of Hebrew scriptures by Talmudic scholars. The acronym for these four layers in Hebrew and Aramaic was P-R-D-S (frequently ‘PaRDeS’ or “Garden” in Hebrew): P standing for pashat or ‘simple,’ R for remez meaning ‘hint,’ D for drash meaning ‘search,’ and S for sod or ‘hidden.’ And Aquinas and Dante are not married to the sequence of the last three layers, only to the distinction of the ‘literal’ and the ‘non-literal.’ I’d suggest, too, that what Aquinas meant by ‘tropological’ has more to do with what we understand as ‘allegory’ than with ‘morality’ as such, except in the interpretation of Scripture.

More important than the historical usage of iconological criticism, the switch of allegory before moral reading breaks the epistemological foundation of layered interpretation. As seen in the chart below, the three layers beneath the surface or historical narrative of any reading correspond to the greater knowledges beneath sense perception and understanding, namely, opinion, science, and wisdom.

The moral layer corresponds with ‘opinion’ rather than ‘science,’ that is, sure knowledge derived from reasoning, or, better, knowledge had by looking through data as transparencies to see the principle or law of which they are only symbols, i.e., allegory.

Mr. Haddon, however, because he reads ‘allegory’ as less than ‘moral,’ makes too little of ‘To Build a Fire’s anti-hero as Man per se rather than just one man in the frozen Yukon wilderness (about which inclusive idea of Man see another great Touchstone article, this one by Anthony Esolen).

C. S. Lewis famously despised allegory, (well, not really) at least when it was used to describe his fiction, because he understood the popular misunderstanding of allegory as mechanical connecting of story to ‘real world’ correspondences, ‘Big Lion is Jesus,’ ‘War of the Ring is WWII,’ etc., rather than symbolic or transparency-reading, alieniloquium, ‘One-thing-standing-for-another-thing,’ in which the signifier was the story element and the signified was something transcendent or at least much greater than historical events or persons.

Mr. Haddon, in following Dr. Cowan and Lewis after Aquinas, is forced to make the moral, the right and wrong of ‘To Build a Fire’ carry much more weight than it can. As allegory, however, of human hubris and life without the virtues, it works wonderfully, in itself and as passage to the anagogical reading Mr. Haddon makes.

I said I had two points and the second is less tendentious or pedantic, I hope.

Mr. Haddon rests his case on the story transcending Jack London’s materialist worldview, by which is meant de facto atheism, on London’s assertion that the character dies for lack of “imagination:”

London blunts the story’s suspense by explaining to the reader in advance why the chechaquo must die: “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things and not in the significances.” Thus, he was “quick and alert,” not stupid; but he failed to appreciate the dangers of traveling alone when it was colder than 50 below because of his lack of imagination—and for this he dies. But London’s proffered interpretation strangely ignores the real reason for his protagonist’s death, which the narrative itself makes apparent.

Mr. Haddon may be right, in fact, I’m certain he is right in his thesis about the intentio auctoris here not being as great and perhaps being even contrary to the grander intentio operis found in ‘To Build a Fire.’ But he could also be misreading London when he writes, ““The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things and not in the significances.”

“Imagination” in the 19th century meant much more than it does now, especially in literary and theological circles. Coleridge famously equates the Primary Imagination as something akin to if not identical with the human spiritual faculty or capacity, the “heart” of the New Testament. It’s not just a cranial ability to conjure mental pictures or images without the benefit of incoming sense perception.

Read in this light, London’s describing him as a man “without imagination” who was unable to pick up on the “significances” is a pointer to the greater meaning of the story Mr. Haddon argues atheist London is unaware of, even denying. I agree with the critic in doubting that Jack London was writing to share a challenging and edifying story of Man separated from the “significances,” most notably, lacking humility before Creation and Creator.

I wonder, though, if Mr. Haddon, in his rush to suggest that atheists have no sense of the sublime, transcendent, or anagogical isn’t over-reaching and under-reading London’s artistry. His comment about imagination and the story structure of hubris vs wisdom makes me think Jack London was not unaware of his message, one that might not contradict the this-worldly politics of the author.

Read ‘Never Absolute Zero’ if you have a minute and let me know what you think; your comments and corrections are coveted as always. And, if you’re not a Touchstone subscriber, please give that a thought!