How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #4
He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his chest. (13)
The man continues to be surprised by how cold it is. As readers, we don't know what to make of this, since we might expect a newcomer to the Yukon to be much wimpier. We expect someone who's used to the cold to not mind it so much. But this man seems not to pay much attention to anything. His brain seems to be missing the part that draws wider conclusions from isolated pieces of information (kind of like the skill you learn when analyzing literature, wink wink).
Quote #5
He pictured the boys finding his body the next day. Suddenly he found himself with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying in the snow […] It certainly was cold, was his thought. (40)
This quote might suggest that when the man is about to die, he finally develops a little imagination and projects his mind completely beyond his freezing body. On the other hand, the repetition of "It certainly was cold" brings us right back to the man's simple, foolish thinking at the beginning of the story. There's a lot of ambiguity here, and as a reader, you might need to decide for yourself what the story is suggesting in these lines.