In Jack London's "To Build a Fire," and Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper," the audience is presented with a character in each story that is unnamed and share similar situation in which there are living in. Both the man and the woman respectively have to fight to survive. The authors use the setting, symbols, and the characters to express that isolation can lead to a person's insanity. The setting in both short stories plays an enormous role in the outcome of the characters. In "To Build a Fire" the man had to endure the harsh weather of the Yukon in order to survive. At one point in the story, the narrator says, "but it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in such short a time" (London 113). The cold starts to get to the man and he starts making bad decisions. On the other hand, we have a women in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" who is obligated to stay in a room. There are two different settings going on in this story. The physical setting is the room with the chained bed, bars on the window, and a gate on the door. The other setting is the time period in which the story is written. In the 1890's women's suffrage was just starting to thrive. This meant that she was fighting against both settings. In both stories the main characters fight against inanimate object in this case being the settings. The symbols in "To Build a Fire" help you understand how the isolation makes the man insane. A recurring symbol in the short story is the fire. On the surface the fire can represent protection and most importantly the warmth. In this story, the fire represents the mans life. Once the fire is put out by the melting snow there is no more chance for survival. "This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek" (London 117). The man is isolated and has no one to talk to about his next step. If there was some