Analysis of "Fire" Saroyan

The story under considiration "The Fire" was written by the american author

and dramatist William Saroyan who is one of the most famouse figures in

literature of his time about half of century ago.

The story is about a little boy who`s lost his mother some time ago.

He is sitting in his house in front of fire thinking about useless life

and insignificance of himself. His father and step-mother has gone for a work.

The boy was told to keep the fire to keep warm in the house. The boy feels

totally alone in the hopeless world. Eventually he burns the house.

The main idea of the text is about the great emotional complication for

those who has lost their relatives and close people. The author creats the

atmosphere of tragedy through the whole text. The author discloses it by the

the speech of the narrator. There are a lot of ritorical questions in the text:

"Can you do it?", "Any of you?". The narrator, who is pratoganist of

Saroyan so we can meet the same image in some other his works, he raveals

the drama of his life. So we can get it that the boy has become more

mature [məˈtʃʊə]. And it is possible to see through ritorical questions again

which creat philosophical mood "They never ask you a real question so how can

you give them a real answer?" "What good was anything in the world when

you couldn`t do it?", "What was the sense in answering a million other

questions and never even asking the real question?". We sould notice

that the usage of such questions is very typical for Saroyan`s style.

To fill the text with emotions and atmosphere of real trouble of one`s life

the author applies repitition: "hush-hushed", and epiphets: "she was dead",

"black night". By the way it seems that colours are used in purpose aim

 in the story. For examle red, yellow and white are appeared to describe

the time of boy`s happiness when his mamy was alive and in contrast the

black is used explain the boy`s mood when she has dead.

To emphosize the atmosphere the author uses oxymorons: "cold and warm",

"freezing and burning" and metaphor: "flowers of the fire" as well as simile:

"The Santa Fe crossing bell rang like churches", "house trembled like the

soft laugher of his father".

In this text of Saroyan there are certain symbols. The main of them which

goes through the whole story is the Fire. For sure it is symbole of love

and cosinessand in the same time it can symbolize a hope and heartbeat,

so it burns out in in the end in all meanings. There is another symbole in

the story which is "big box", so it can symbolize a grave and death. One more

significant moment in the story is that the boy doesn`t call his father as

father or dad but calls him by his name Jessy(Jessy was always laughing).

It displays us a distance between father and the son.

By the way the boy`s attitude to his step mother is not bad ("Beth was allright

She was swell, she even brought him candy and toys). But she can`t replace

his mom.

The boy finds himself helpless. He wants to bring his mother back but he

doesn`t know how to do it even nobody knows.So he just asks: "Can you do it,

Could Jesse do something that would make her be in the house again where

she belonged? Could anybody do anything in the world that would make something

like that happen?". This massage is full of philosophic meaning, the theme

of death and life is atouched so to make us think about it, to make us worth

what we have in the actual moment.

Personally i like the story even it`s very emotional and emotions are more

negative. But it makes me think one more time about the life and death,

 that nothing is infinite [ˈɪnfɪnət) so we should apreciate every moment we have.