The Representation of Fire
Amelia Reagan, Emma Wallat, Eden Meyer-Hanover
During the past three weeks, we have had a common theme of fire in various readings and films. Because of this, we wanted to investigate these correlations and their importance in each piece. Specifically, we are going to be analyzing its significance in different scenes of the Lemonade film, in Teaching My Mother To Give Birth by Shire, and in Beloved. Through analyzing these pieces, we feel as though fire represents a range of emotions, such as loss, power, rebellion, fear, and rage.
Although fire is not directly outlined in any of the songs in Lemonade, scenes with fire in them show a lot of symbolism throughout the film. In the film, we feel as though Beyonce uses fire to symbolize the rage inside of her through her emotional phases of being cheated on. The first time fire can be seen is within “Denial”, with her using a bat to smash everything in her way, ending with a fire eruption and Beyonce looking both powerful and elated. As can be seen in the image above, the next time fire can be seen is in “Anger” which shows the rage that’s getting to a boiling point inside of her. The fire comes back again in “Emptiness” with Beyonce walking out of a burning house with a firm stance which sets a tone of power. Thrillest describes this scene by saying, “with the way this sequence closes out by literally burning the house down, there is the impression of Beyoncé reworking her own identity. She is Phoenix, hear her roar” (Thrillist). The last notable time that fire is seen in this film is in “Forgiveness” where there is a fire lit in the fireplace as Beyonce and Jay Z are making up, symbolizing the anger that is still present although it was time for forgiveness. The fire in these specific chapters are meaningful as they represent the rage inside Beyonce as she is going through her emotional phases of being cheated on. This is why at the beginning of the movie, the fire represented rage through destruction, while towards the end, the fire represented the rage still inside her while she was trying to forgive.
The representatives of fire and the color red can be interpreted in multiple ways, but Toni Morrison mentions it multiple times throughout the novel Beloved. Fire frequently “symbolizes eternity and forever. It is commonly referred to as the ‘eternal flame’, which refers to the symbolic flame that protects life.” In Beloved, fire is seen through using it for warmth and cooking. Toni Morrison decided to use the powerful meaning of fire to burn Sixo, a male slave in Sweet Home, to death. In the scene where his death occurs, he was trying to escape Sweet Home, and the white gunmen tried to capture him,
“one of them hit Sixo in the head with his rifle, and when he comes to, a hickory fire is in front of him, and he is tied at the waist to a tree. Schoolteacher has changed his mind: ‘This one will never be suitable.’ … The fire keeps failing, … They came to capture, not kill. … By the light of the hominy fire, Sixo straightens. … He laughs. … His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs. … Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, “Seven-O! Seven-O!”
After reading how Sixo could not move and the power the schoolteacher held almost like a dictator with the fire, he had nothing else left to do but laugh. In other words, Sixo realized that although he was dying, the woman who was his lover with his unborn baby still escaped, and that is truly the eternal flame. Beloved shared a powerful story of a family’s horrific past in slavery to escaping and then how it currently affects their life, and now many states want to ban the book in order to protect children.
Looking at Warsan Shire in her “Teaching My Mother To Give Birth” poems there were many mentions of fire in various texts. I noticed fire was mentioned a lot around men and the things they do to women. Also, things that white people have done to black people. Firstly in the poem, Beauty Shire says, “When she was my age, she stole the neighbor’s husband, burnt his name into her skin”. This story is about an older sister growing up fast and saying that boys are haram, meaning forbidden. I think burning his name into her skin means that she was calling him her’s but also could have been flipped where she is kind of her property. When you write your name on something it is showing how you think it’s yours. Next in the last poem “In Love and in War” the whole poem is just “To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’’”. In class, we discussed multiple things we think this could mean. I think it’s about setting yourself on fire around men because it’s inevitable that they will cause you to burn. Set yourself on fire before he can do it, so it’s in your control. Next, there is a poem named “Fire” which its from the point of view of a husband who hits his wife. He overhears his wife on the phone with her mother talking about the abuse. He has a memory from his childhood, “On the drive home you remember the funeral you went to as a little boy, double burial for a couple who burned to death in their bedroom” where a wife burned herself and her husband when she found out about his affair. In the end, “I swear I thought my body was on fire”, he starts to worry he is going to get his karma.
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