Why is it significant that the main character has no name in "To Build a Fire"?

The short story "To Build a Fire" has as its main theme
Man vs. Nature.  In this story, the juxtaposition of the man with the dog points to the
strength of animal instinct against the rationality of man.  So, the absence of a name
for the character extends him from the particular to the general--Jack London's intent
in this naturalistic story in which a human being is subject to natural forces beyond
his control.

Against the advice of the "old-timer," the
man, whose "trouble...was that he was without imagination," ventures out on a nine-hour
trek across the Klondike.  With him trots a dog,

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a big native husky, the proper wolf dog,
gray-coated and without any visible or teperamental difference from its brother, the
wild wolf....Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by
the man's
judgment.

Clearly,
the natural forces, ones that the man ignores, win out against the human who ignores an
intuitive sense that he may have. 

As a naturalist, Jack
London was among a group of writers who went beyond realism in an attempt to portray
life exactly as it is. Naturalists were infuenced by Charles Darwin's theories of
natural selection and suvival of the fittest which held that huan behavior is determined
by heredity and environment.  Relying on new theories in sociology and psychology, the
naturalists dissected human behavior with detachment and objectivity, like scientists
dissecting laboratory specimens.  "To Build a Fire" is the recording of such an
"experiment."  And, as such, there is no need to give the man a name, since he
represents any man who behaves as he did, any man who does not understand that fur and
instinct are necessary for survival in the Klondike in the
winter.