Roughing It · Chapter
XXXII explained
Lost in a snowstorm and facing death, the narrator and his companions attempt to start a fire with pistols and by rubbing sticks, failing repeatedly.
What happens
Lost in a snowstorm and facing death, the narrator and his companions attempt to start a fire with pistols and by rubbing sticks, failing repeatedly. After finding matches, their last hope is extinguished by the wind. Accepting their fate, they forgive each other, renounce their vices, and await death by freezing, only to be rescued by a sudden discovery.
Themes in this chapter
Humor and Exaggeration
The failed attempts to start a fire with pistols and the melodramatic deathbed confessions are presented with Twain's characteristic comic exaggeration.
Work and Labor
The physical labor of gathering sticks and the futile efforts to create fire highlight the struggle for survival in the wilderness.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Describes the desperate situation, participates in fire-starting attempts, and experiences emotional repentance and acceptance of death.
- Ollendorff
Attempts to light a fire with his revolver, forgives others, renounces whisky, and breaks down in tears.
- Mr. Ballou
Finds four matches, attempts to light them, and throws away his pack of cards as part of a deathbed reform.
Key passages
“We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that it could be done, and without any trouble—because every man in the party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.”
Having no matches, the group attempted to use pistols to start a fire, a technique none had tried but all believed possible because they had read about it in books, similar to the myth of rubbing sticks together.
Twain satirizes the blind faith in book knowledge over practical experience.
“I threw away my pipe, and in doing it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden me like a tyrant all my days.”
The narrator discarded his pipe, feeling liberated from a lifelong addiction that had controlled him.
Highlights the theme of repentance and reform in the face of death.