An Analysis Of 'Hanging Fire' By Audre Lorde

Death is inevitable; it should not be feared but instead accepted, and this is the main idea and theme explored in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.” In the poem, Death is personified as a gentleman who “kindly stopped [stops] for me [her]” (Dickinson 2), “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), and with whom she stops at a “house that seemed [seems]/ A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson 17-18) or in other words, her grave. To begin the poem, the fact that Death is represented as “if he were a human being” (Evans 15) implies that it is humane. This contributes to the idea that death is not to fear. Later on, it can be concluded that this person has control over her as she describes how she “had put away / My [her] labor, and my [her] leisure too, / for his civility” (Dickinson 6-8), which implies that “everything that had once seemed so important and distracting now recedes in importance” (Evans 17), and how he “slowly drove [drives] … know[ing] no haste” (Dickinson 5), which gives “no clear sense of the underlying purpose of the journey or its ultimate destination” (Evans 16) and thus implies that only Death knows the path and destination of the journey. Both of these examples contribute to the fact that Death completely controls a person against its will and that it is inevitable. Finally when “we [they] paused before a house that seemed / A swelling of the ground” (Dickinson

The poem, “Hanging Fire,” by Audre Lorde was a very relatable and enjoying poem to read.

Death is an aspect of life that everyone becomes acquainted with sooner or later. The poem, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” by Emily Dickinson, is seen as a reflection of the passing of time in one 's life while living. No one knows when it is their time to die, and we live everyday as if tomorrow it promised. Dickinson is saying that since we as humans tend to live on the expectation for tomorrow, we don 't think about the end of our life or when it will be. That time will stand still when, and only when, life draws to a close, yet it will no longer matter.

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something” (NP). This is a quote from U.S. Representative John Lewis’ commencement speech that he gave at Washington University in Saint Louis. Lewis was a civil rights leader who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The essay, The Fourth of July, by Audre Lorde is about her trip to Washington D.C., and the racism she experienced. As an 8th-grade graduation present, Audre’s parents took Audre and her sister to Washington D.C. In pre-civil rights America, racism was a powerful force experienced by minorities, limiting their opportunities to advance economically and integrate equally into America’s predominantly white society.

By the end of the poem, the narrator states that “since then ‘tis centuries; but each feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses’ heads were toward eternity” (Source A). This stanza declared that it has been centuries since the narrator died and hints that the narrator’s soul is still alive and will exist for eternity. Therefore, the poem describes a perception of death that when it is time for death to reign, its force and power cannot be overthrown. Due to this, death should be accepted instead of feared.

She enforces this idea onto the narrator tirelessly regardless of actually considering her daughter’s outlook of the mother’s idea. This shows that the narrator’s mother has taken another extreme to be too involved and controlling her life. Next, is the time and age the speaker and narrator are from the poem, “Hanging Fire”, and the story, “Two kinds”, are currently in. For instance, in Lorde’s poem, the speaker says she is fourteen, and she has various ordeals to do. Due to constant pressure and confusion and the lonesome environment she lives in, she questions whether she would come out of it alive and how would people finally understand her. This depicts that the speaker is currently a teenage girl who shall live the moment to then eventually confront and solve her

Smith states her argument topic the humanities are a necessity in people’s life at the beginning by using the work of Audre Lorde. She claims that the vanish of language proves that the skill of critical thinking is degradation through various types of social media (48). By proving this claim, Smith uses the word from Robert Frost as an evidence to prove that people’s minds are easy to be manipulated. Smith mentions that for a long time, in many people’s opinions, the humanities are not making any profit because they see people always have a difficult time to find a decent job after graduating with a major in the humanities. She even uses her own story as a counter- evidence to demonstrate this situation in widely consider (50).

His previous “cold reprieve” has been warmed by the leaves that “burn red” before dying in nature. The short but beautiful life of the leaf is a metaphor for what life should be - beautiful regardless of the time given. This juxtaposition of life as a “cold reprieve” changing into the image of a leaf burning “red” shows how the voice’s view on life is changing throughout the poem by the echo’s prompting. Realizing that nature is beautiful in death, he now understands that life is a beautiful journey leading up to death that should be cherished in all of its beauty. Dying is a process that can bring “ecstasy” in its wake. Waiting for death is not so bad when a beautiful life surrounded by joyful experiences is so readily available to all that are willing to think positively. Regardless of the beauty that can come with life, it can seem to become a burden that people suffer through until death. The grief that comes with “life’s long disease” will be resolved in death. Death is not an “enemy” to be feared, but a natural part of life that must be accepted. In contrast, the worst enemy of the voice is himself - his own uncertainty and worry have caused all of his pain. All of the rhetorical questions that he asks display the extent of his worry about the unknown future, but his subconscious begins to soothe his worries and comfort him with the

After finishing the selection titled “Eighteen” by Maria Banus, I was completed surprised on how genuine the authors feelings were. Normally when I read poetry it is difficult to understand the meaning of numerous amount of it, if not all of the lines but this one was different as if it pertained to me. This poem made me feel rather sad and miserable because there are a lot of grievances that one may bring up about growing into an adult. Everyone always says how enjoyable your teenage years are, how invigorating the experience is to live life to the fullest and to enjoy it before it comes to end, but a lot of people may disagree. This analogy is incorrect to

The poem, “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is a both a confessional and identity poem. She is not only addressing her internal battle and self-suffering, but also discussing the societal inequities African American women were suffering in the United States. The poem’s diction, on the surface, produces a tranquil tone to the poem. This facet of tranquility in the poem is used to express how her battle against inequity will not be fought with violence or hatred, and how she is not blaming any specific party or institution for her personal suffering. She instead plans to use the power and beauty of words to communicate the flaws of the image of women, fight against injustice and racism, and alleviate her internal despair. “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is an anthem for African American women and uses vivid imagery, ancestral references, and a call to action to connect to the reader and enact a fight against the underrepresentation of African American women.

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry

As she left the burning building, five questions entered her mind; where was she, who was she, who were those people, why did they do this to her, and why couldn’t she walk?

“They killed my son in cold blood,” lamented Eloise Armstead. Her husband, Add Armstead, was traveling to work with a companion on Saturday evening in the early 1970s. Thomas Shea and Walter Scott, responding to a call about a cabby that was robbed earlier that day, used this opportunity to rid the world of the wicked and gain a victory for the righteous. Walking along New York Blvd. in South Jamaica, Queens, Shea and his partner pulled alongside the two. Armstead says, as he recalls the incident, “We were walking, not saying anything to each other, and this car pulls up, and this white fella opens the door with a gun.” To him and his companion it looked like they were going to be robbed, so they ran. As the gunshots

In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death “ (448), the speaker of the poem is a woman who relates about a situation after her death. The speaker personifies death as a polite and considerate gentleman who takes her in a carriage for a romantic journey; however, at the end of this poem, she finishes her expedition realizing that she has died many years ago.

Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both written about life’s stopping point, death. Although the poems are written by the same poet, both poems view death in a different manner. Between the two poems, one views death as having an everlasting life while the other anticipates everlasting life, only to realize it does not exist. While both poems are about death, both poems also illustrate that the outcome of death is a mysterious experience that can only be speculated upon with the anticipation of everlasting life.