Literary Analysis Of 'Hanging Fire' By Audre Lorde

“Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666” is one of Anne Bradstreet’s most effective poems. Part of that effectiveness comes from the poignant tension between her worldly concerns, as represented by her household furnishings and her spiritual aspirations.

Another aspect to this poem that is very important would be the figurative language. The author uses a lot of similes and metaphors throughout further illustrate this father’s ridiculous ways. The speaker uses the simile “snaked like dragons” to describe the fire engines, this was a good choice in comparison because when you think of a dragon you automatically think of bright fires and then when you continue on the thought you think of their crouched down tiptoes

Regina Barecca’s poem “Nighttime Fires” explains a complex view of the narrator’s father. This poem recalls a part of the unnamed narrator’s life that she is still trying to understand it in her adulthood. This poem illustrates the long lasting impression that was made on a little girl, whose father seeks satisfaction by watching the destruction that is caused by the nighttime fires. The poem creates imagery in the audience’s mind of a father’s character, as his grown daughter still remembers the events that took place when she was five years old. This poem is about a father, who is a victim of the economic downfall that leads him to be without a job; yet, his actions and behaviors are very unusual and unforgivable. The disappointment with the society that has made him unsuccessful in Regina Barreca’s “Nighttime Fire” tells us the thoughts that the speaker has towards her father.

In the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, the protagonist foremost values his pride, which leads to his demise. The story starts off with the protagonist taking a detour in the Yukon so that he could survey the trees in the area (he was doing this so that he could send logs down the river to the gold prospecting camp, where he would sell the wood to the prospectors for money). But, the protagonist’s pride blinds him from what could have and should have done to ensure his survival in the Yukon. About halfway through his journey, he accidentally breaks through the ice on the spring and his foot falls into the water. At the temperatures mentioned in the story (seventy below zero), if he did not dry himself properly, it could lead to serious frostbite and/or death. So, he was forced to build a fire, and the “fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had an accident: he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish” (London 8). The man keeps feeding the fire and gets ready to take his (frozen and potentially dangerous) footwear off, and feels content and a sense of satisfaction of disproving the old-timers. But, just as it seemed to be that the fire was stable and strong, snow that was on the branches of the spruce tree he was under fell

The first poem I think you should consider in adding to your list of poems is “For the Fire”, this poem was

In the poem “Hanging Fire” is written from a point of view of a 14 year old girl who is worried about her life ending to early and seems to be impatient about when her life will start to turn around and go the right away. The first and second line “I am fourteen and my skin has betrayed me” means that this girl believes she is missing out on things because she is not white. Many young children are unaware of their race and how they can become affected by it, but as they get older around the time of puberty they start to notice the difference. In line three, four and five “the boy I cannot live without still l sucks his thumb in secret” since she is fourteen, she is a young woman but in other ways she is still a child. She thinks she is old enough of all in love but the boy that she loves is still childish. She doesn’t seem to see her own childish , but we can because most young girls always want to think by teenage years they are old enough for many

In the stories To Build a Fire and A Worn Path, Jack London and Eudora Welty tell the stories of two protagonists going on arduous journeys during the winter. Phoenix Jackson, the protagonist of A Worn Path, is an elderly lady hardened by the trials of life as a black woman living in the Southern United States, prior to the Civil Rights Era. She is surprisingly limber, resilient, and healthy for her age and has assumed the responsibility of caring for her sick seven- year- old grandson. She diligently provides him with the medicine necessary to treat him for the ingestion of lye. The young man, the protagonist in To Build a Fire, is a young northerner who is responsible for himself and his dog. He is besieged by the petulance of youth and ignores the advice of his elders, depending instead on youthful bravado to guide his decisions. Ultimately, on these two journeys of survival, both protagonists will depend on their life experiences to guide them through. The young man will be guided by his limited life experiences while Phoenix will depend on her wealth of knowledge to choose her path to survival.

Ilan Stavans says that Juan Rulfo’s book, The Plain in Flames, is best represented by the phrase realismo crudo. Stavans defines this phrase as “a type of realism interested in the rawness of life”, meaning that he characterizes Rulfo’s writing as an unfiltered view into the lives of the average Mexican (Stavans, xi). By writing in this style, Rulfo is able to provide “an image—instead of just a description—of our landscape” as stated by Octavio Paz (xv). To create this image, Rulfo broke his story writing the process down into three separate steps. As paraphrased by Ilan Stavans, the first step “is to create a character”, the second step “is to place him in an environment where he might move around” and the third step “is to discover how the character expresses himself” (xiii). Rulfo was able to repeatedly crafted stories that were filled with high levels of realismo crudo by using that special three-step process. By creating his protagonist, crafting an environment for said protagonist, and allowing the character to express themselves within this environment, Rulfo crafted a three-tier image of post-revolutionary life in Mexico that has never been seen before.

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.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential poets of all time, and has a unique way of using literal imagery to paint a picture in the readers mind. The best poets are those that excel at using their words to create clear, concrete images and intrigue their reader. Dickinson began writing poetry around the year 1855, and prospered for another 10 years. Some of her most famous poems include “I Taste a liquor Never Brewed”, “Success is Counted Sweetest”, and “Wild nights – Wild Nights!”, all of which have influenced many aspiring writers to become poets, and show her true colors as a poet. Among her works of poetry, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, is one that resembles the frequent patterns of Dickinson’s style of

Anyone who loves poetry should get their hands on Larry McCarthy’s Firethorn Inn: A Book of Verse (Outskirts Press, 2016). This is a collection of poems that the author organizes in three sections: Natural World, Emotion and Relationships, and Silliness. “Natural World” extols the love of nature, “Emotion and Relationships” deals with all facets of human relationships, while “Silliness” is about humorous stories and experiences.

Lorde’s poem “Coal” tackles political views expressed from her experience as a Black feminist as she continues to struggle against labels and stereotypes. The poem is free-verse and has no definite rhyme or meter, except in this poem, there is little rhyme. This poem shows her personality and her willingness to be part of society’s norms. In the poem, the lines 3 and 4 (Lorde), “From the earth’s inside./ There are many kinds of open”, she mentions that she was trapped between the layers of the earth and her true self was underneath all of the labels and stereotypes (representing as the layers), given to her race by

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” is a remarkable masterpiece that exercises thought between the known and the unknown. Critics call Emily Dickinson’s poem a masterpiece with strange “haunting power.”

In the second stanza, Lorde paints the streets of New York in a grim image. “I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds…” This line could also mean that Lorde feels trapped in a society ruled by white male supremacy (the desert) that is still ongoing with no end in sight (raw gunshot wounds). This meaning is more probable because Lorde emphasizes in lines 11 and 12 of the second stanza “as it [the blood] sinks into the whiteness of the desert…” Next, Lorde makes her call for revenge for the brutality of Clifford Glover. She says that Glover is “…a dead child dragging his shattered black face off the edge of my sleep…” and that “…blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders is the only liquid for miles…” Her “stomach churns” at

“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”(Roosevelt). Memories are a phenomenon that brings both good and bad thoughts of the past back into one’s reality. This comes to show that an individual is a product of her past but is not a prisoner of it, due to it being her history and not her present. Margaret Atwood speaks in her poem, “Morning in the Burned House”, as a child who is reliving her past, although, that is perceived to her as her reality and she becomes a prisoner of that memory. This poem illustrates the message that the past is not one’s reality in that moment; it is history that tends to repeat itself in one’s mind. In this poem, Atwood expresses her thought and message through the specific imagery she uses of the five senses and the fire. Atwood uses the five senses imagery as a way to make one feel as if she is beside the child, reliving that memory with her. She uses the fire imagery as a way to set the tone for the poem, that perhaps something bigger and more life changing happened to the child. As well, Atwood uses the theme of illusion versus reality as a way to portray what is the child’s truth and what is a memory.