Preview

"A Wall of Fire Rising" Response/Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
674 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
"A Wall of Fire Rising" Response/Analysis
Brady Miller
Intro to Literature
T/R 12:50-2:15
10/30/2012
Reader Response #8
“A Wall of Fire Rising” by Edwidge Danticat

There are two people in this world: those who can deal with life’s challenges and those who cannot. “A Wall of Fire Rising” by Edwidge Danticat recognizes this predicament in the shantytowns of Haiti in 1991. Freedom has a different meaning for everybody and can be attained in different ways. As referenced by Guy, the hot air balloon is the key to freedom. Guy and his wife, Lili, have different perspectives on freedom and what life should be. Lili loves her husband Guy, but is not too fond of his negative comments and views towards people. Before marrying Guy, Lili was skeptical since he had an angular hairline. “It was said that people with angular hairlines often have very troubled lives” (238). Guy and Lili’s son, Little Guy, lived in a world by himself. He was focused on education and remembering his lines for his role Boukman in the upcoming school play.
It was not of major importance for Little Guy to be focused on his parent’s financial situation. He has not been faced yet with the reality of being dirt poor. Lili wanted Little Guy to have the life that Guy and she never had. She wanted to give her son the opportunity to be successful. Guy wanted his son to work in the sugar mill, the only source of jobs in the area. Lili opposed this idea for it might influence their son’s destiny. The main quote that plays a major role throughout the story happens when Little Guy is reciting his lines for the play. “There is so much sadness in the faces of my people. I have called on their gods, now I call on our gods. I call on our young. I call on our old. I call on our mighty and the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall all let out one piercing cry that we may either live freely or we should die” (244). Boukman says this during the revolution as the great rebel leader. A question for Danticat, would have to be if she

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Giver by Lois Lowry includes a major concept of Freedom. Freedom may come easily to some people but in The Giver people don´t have the freedom of choice or even the freedom to express feelings , they get to make no choice such as what they would like to do as a career, who they would like to marry additionally their not even allowed to love someone let alone expressing it. The Giver reveals the horrible outcomes of a community which has relinquished their freedom to secure its safety. In this essay the points which will be stated include…

    • 100 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The boy, in leaving Haiti, is hopeful that another generation after him will run his abandoned show. He knows that he made a difference, and he hopes that others will want to uphold it. Likewise, in the story, “A Wall of Fire Rising”, a man named Guy sparks a hope within his son through his suicide. The chapter tells of Guy’s impoverished family, and how his son, Little Guy, was cast in his school’s play as Boukman; hero of freedom. Guy worked for a family of Haitian Arabs who owned a hot air balloon, which, in the end of the chapter, he flies and jumps out of.…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Bearded, double-chined, dark-spectacled, the hair grown long and thatching tell tail ears, checks padded with middle-age” – Shows that the child has now grown into a man and is trying to conceal themselves from their heritage. To become their own person.…

    • 503 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Isabel Metaphors

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Isabel’s pursuit of freedom is a metaphor for America’s pursuit of freedom.…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story, their lifestyle is described by using plastic buckets turned upside down to sit, and mats to sleep on. Every night Lili uses a lemon to moisturize her ashen legs. Little Guy, goes to school however it is inferred that Guy and Lili did not went to school, “If my father had worked there… I would be working” (235). In addition, in the story when there is not kerosene for the lamp, the son has to sit outside on the road to study under the street lamps by other neighbors.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester delves into the history of Europe’s dark ages through the early Renaissance. Three key figures constantly referred to within the novel include Erasmus, Martin Luther, and Ferdinand Magellan. All three men are responsible for Europe’s entrance into a modern era of reformation, knowledge, and discovery, and are widely considered to responsible for the development of the humanist philosophy. When Manchester begins weaving his historical tale of the middle ages, he details how the dark ages witnessed very few inventive ideas and was dominated by the Catholic Church and its papacy. As each of the three men are introduced and their accomplishments explained, the story takes a turn and leads towards a modernized era. Erasmus, Martin Luther, and Ferdinand Magellan all share a devotion to their religion which connects to their exploits, however, their overall contributions seem to somewhat differ.…

    • 911 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A shout for freedom can be heard across the world. Everywhere hands are raised in violence in protest for one's freedom. Much of the world has been denied of their freedom such as religion, opinion, and speech. These freedoms are often taken for granted, but they are more so often taken away. Martin luther’s “I have a dream”, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , and Azar Nafisi’s “From reading lolita in tehran” all demonstrate the silent struggle and demand for freedom.…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Gandhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes” by Jack Canfield. In the two stories, Waiting for Dan, and A Letter Home, they talk about what the experience was either having a family member in one of the many movements or experiencing it first hand on a campus. In Waiting for Dan it is told from the wife’s point of view who is waiting for her husband to come back home from a Freedom Ride. In A Letter Home, this college student, Kara, is experiencing first hand a riot at her school, she is trying to tell her parents what…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Livingstrom, J. T. (1974). Through the Fire (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Harper Collins. p.154…

    • 1045 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Empire of the Summer Moon

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The protagonist in Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Jacob Barnes, is a down on his luck war veteran living in France. Jake is characterized by his experiences prior to the events of the book and he narrates the story from a quiet observer’s third person perspective, often times quite cynically, exemplified when he tells his friend Robert Cohn, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”Although never openly stating it, Jake on several occasions implies that due to a war injury he has lost the ability to have sex which leaves him feeling very insecure about his own masculinity, likely contributing to his pessimism. Also contributing to his bad attitude is that Lady Brett Ashley, the woman whom he focuses his affections on, refuses to commit to him because it would mean sacrificing sex. The events of the book follow Jake around as he drinks and parties all of his worries and misery away in many bars all over Europe; meeting many different people, each new character with their own unique personality contrasting and accentuating Jake and his closest friends.…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Freedom, by definition, is the power to act, speak, or think as one wants. However, the meaning of freedom can vary greatly from person to person depending on the society in which they live. The novel Audacity by Melanie Crowder follows the life and hardships of Clara Lemlich, a young Jewish girl who moved from her home in Russia to America in order to escape prejudice against the Jews. Despite this, their family found further hardships both while traveling and upon arriving at the new world. To Clara, freedom is equality for her, her family, and the other young immigrant girls working under substandard conditions.…

    • 148 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book Of Mice and Men focuses on the friendship of two migrant workers in California at a time when most of the work was done by people and not by machines. George was a small man who acted worldly and wise. Lennie was a huge man that had the mind of a child. Together George and Lennie would bounce from job to job with no money in their pockets and only the dream of someday owning a place of their own to keep them going. The two men were not able to stay in one place too long because Lennie would get into trouble and George would have to get the two of them out of the bad situation and find a new place to work until the next bad thing would happen. Why would George continue to complicate his life by dragging Lennie around? Why wouldn’t George just set off on his own and make his life a whole lot easier? It was obvious when I read through the book that Lennie could not have survived in the world without somebody like George watching out for him. As the story unfolded I had to ask myself, “Did George need Lennie as much as Lennie needed George?”…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Determining whether the God you praise and worship is choleric because of your presence by the sins you’ve created is a never ending battle in the 17th-18th centuries. Upon the Burning of Our House is a poem, with nine stanzas, written by Anne Bradstreet explaining her understanding and able to live and learn from sin with God. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a work, written as a sermon, by Jonathan Edwards who preaches to all the non-Puritan sinners, that if they don’t convert and take blame for their sins, God’s anger toward them will be unbearable and force them to the pits of hell. Analyzing Bradstreet’s and Edwards’ works, a reader can distinguish the personality of the two writers and the different views of God that people acquire.…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Faulkner's Barn Burning

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Cited: Faulkner, William. Barn Burning (from Literature). 12th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2013. 171 - 182. Print.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Critical Essay

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages

    You and I live in a world were modernism is reaching new heights every day. One day that touchscreen phone is considered new, and then next week it’s old news. These two stories that I am going to compare are about the role of technology, science and how it affects me and you. Based on how it uses new technology and modern science A Sound of Thunder is a better sci-fiction story.…

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays