"On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip lash..." (London 347). The implication is the dog could have saved the man if there had been some trust between the two, which again carries out London's appreciation of the animals and the elements. This man could have learned from both, but he chose not to, and paid the ultimate price, which leads to the irony of the story, and the arrogance of the man. Each character's irony is important to the development of the story and the character. The irony with the man in the Yukon is his dog, who "knew" it was too cold to travel, and would have warned him, had the man been kinder to the dog. "So...
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