Forgotten Fire Analysis

“Who you are and what you believe in is your real home, the only home no one can take from you, the only home that will last.” I believe that this is one of the themes for the book Forgotten Fire. Throughout the whole book, Vahan is roaming around, looking for a new place to call home. He roamed from city to city hiding out in abandoned houses. At one point he joined up with a “band of Turkish refugees” heading “towards the rumor of remote villages safe from the war.” But even when he was surrounded by others, “he never felt more alone in his life”. Occasionally he would get help from a friend or kind stranger who felt sympathy and could offer him a temporary “home”, but he was never truly content with his surroundings. There was always
Taishan, his wife and Seta. I shared the same thoughts as Vahan when he described his future with Seta and how they would be happy. The way he imagined them as a “… family raising a child, growing happier every day.” The way he would feel when he would “… kiss her lips at last” and “tell her at last what was in his heart.”
But it seems the wise words of Ara Sarkisian would hold true for Vahan as Seta dies along with the good doctor’s wife. “Time takes everything…But your heart, your character, your faith, do not belong to time.” He would leave soon after to embark on a journey to Constantinople, where he would once again find another temporary home, however this one was different.
In this home, he could catch up on the “three years of schooling that he had lost.” He would find the “steel” his father spoke of and “… study when all the other boys had gone to bed.” There was a meal for him when he was hungry, a bed for when he was tired, and the peace of mind that came with it. Yet Vahan knew there was a “hollowness” inside of him that “nothing could fill” where his family had died, but he would continue learning because “I reasoned the more learned, the more I could become, for myself and my