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The story uses an omniscient narrator who understands “the man” and his inner world but maintains a judgmental distance. The narrator has a much better understanding of the Yukon and its dangers than the man does. The man accepts the cold unthinkingly, causing the narrator to criticize the limits of the man’s imagination. While concern over the extreme temperature “never entered [the man’s] head,” the narrator knows the cold is dangerous and even knows that it is 75 degrees below zero, not 50 below as the man thinks, drawing a distinction between what the man believes and what the narrator explains is the situation’s reality. The narrator keeps a distance from the man that makes him less of an individual and more of an “every man” character caught in a predicament. However, the narrator clearly blames the man for putting himself in this situation; the narrator describes the man’s errors as well as their consequences with indifference. In contrast, the narrator describes the dog’s feelings more deeply and with less judgment. The narrator seems to have more sympathy for the dog, a creature in the service of a cruel owner, forced to travel when it is too cold. In the end, the narrator leaves both the man and dog to their fate: the man to his death, and the dog to a chance of finding food and survival with other humans.

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