Richard Burns Up His House Fire Analysis

Although the scene in which Richard burns down his house happened while Richard was a child, it foreshadows the events in the rest of the book by showing the growth in the fire and his reactions to the growing flame. In the beginning of the scene in which Richard burns down his house, Richard begins with with simply looking at the flames. However, soon after, Richard grows more and more curious and begins to wonder what else the flames could do. The flame in the scene that Richard burns down his house foreshadows the independence and knowledge that Richard gains, and reacts to, throughout his journey. It starts with an observance, then curiosity, followed by action, fear, and eventually finding his identity.
At the beginning of the fire scene,
He was essentially beaten for his curiousity. What used to seem as a harmless curiosity had actually turned around to harm him. He was “lost in a fog of fear” once again, however this time it was for a different reason (7). This time Richard feared the outcome of what started as something so simple. This caused Richard to feel a “yearning for the identification loosed in [him]” (8). Just before making the decision to move to the north, Richard was always living in fear of what the whites would do to him. He refers to the south’s culture as “the terror from which [he] fled” (257). Simply living in the south among the cruel whites caused a constant fear of being attacked for something as simple as curiosity, independence, or knowledge. Richard was craving to find a new identity in the North. When he arrived in the North, he began to see that the racism was easier to overlook however it was still there. He felt the need to even leave the only friends that he had known in the North in order to develop more of his identity. In the North, Richard was able to fulfill his yearning for identity through the knowledge and independence that had been building since he was