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WILLIAM SAROYAN - FIRE

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WILLIAM SAROYAN - FIRE

The story under analysis is about a boy sitting in the house alone. He has lost his mother and lives with his father and his new wife. Leaving the house, they tell him to keep the fire in the stove but not open the door of it. He thinks about the meaning of everything in life staring at the fire and eventually burns the house.

The author creates the atmosphere of tragedy in this story. The boy has faced the death for a first time in his life, probably, the death of his most beloved person — his mother. He feels devastated by her death, and the most frightening is that he doesn't get any help from his father and his stepmother. They certainly try to help him somehow — Beth brings him toys and candy, and he doesn't hate her, as many children in his shoes would do. But toys and candy is not what he needs. He needs someone talk to him, help him to cope with this situation, probably he should be shown to a psychologist. But they don't do any of this, because of them being very busy with their own life that still lasts, or because of their ignorance, or because they think he doesn't feel the grief that deeply. They say that all he needs is sitting by the stove and keep warm.

We can see how psychologically distant the boy and his father are from each other, at least in the fact that the boy calls his father Jesse. By first names is not how we usually call our parents, unless we don't feel like we are just strangers who live together for some reason. Jesse also hurts him when he says that Beth is his mother now, as if there can be several mothers and one can just change them here and there. Jesse doesn't even love Beth, probably, he brought her home just because he didn't know how to deal with the situation on his own. So here we can see the boy's loneliness and his detachment from everybody in the world, from his father, his step-mother, people from school. He has seen that everything ends and there's nothing you could do about it. He experiences a crisis in his life and there's nobody near him to help him to cope with it.

But this atmosphere is achieved not only through the themes being explored, but also with the help of different stylistic devices. I really admire how the story is written, with all its repetitions, similes, cases of antithesis and symbols, which help you to feel like you are the part of the story and sympathize the boy with a triple force. The author shows the contrast between the warm room and the outer world. There is only one source of life in the house — the fire in the stove. The spurts of flame are like petals of flowers to the boy, and flowers are the symbol of life, but though there are a lot of petals coming from the fire, they disappear instantly. He realizes that people are not able to enliven smth or smb. Jesse works at the factory, he makes certain parts of machines, but when all these parts are taken together, nobody knows if the automobile is going to work. People are helpless and everything is nothing, because people cannot give a life. But there is still something in the fire, some blink of life, and by feeding the fire with the house he tries to enliven everything around him and at the same time to show everybody that hopelessness of their lives and the world. It is the antithesis, which is shown at the beginning of the story, when he feels freezing and burning at the same time. He is being torn apart by completely different feelings.

He asks himself a lot of rhetorical questions, which makes the atmosphere also philosophical. What could anybody make? Could somebody bring his mother back to life? Is there any sense in the life? How one could give a real answer if nobody asks a real question? Finally he figures out that the answer to the real question is no. Nobody can do anything, and the life is meaningless.

Though I completely agree with this boy, I can come up with a couple of counterarguments. People surely can't bring somebody back to life (though some people in Haiti would disagree), but we can actually produce a new life. But what's the meaning again, if everybody dies eventually? But even if we can't do anything, we can't do anything with the fact that we can't do anything, except maybe committing suicide. But why would we do that if we can just accept the fact that everybody will die and enjoy the life now?

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