Robert Wesley
English 1302
October 12, 2015 Hanging Fire
Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire” is a short poem of thirty five lines of free verse, without a regular rhyme scheme or meter. The persona, a fourteen-year-old female, uses simple vocabulary, declarative sentences, and speaks directly to her audience, making readers aware of her anxieties, isolation, and loneliness. Like a typical teenager, she complains of things that seem minor to adults, but are a big deal to a fourteen year old. For one, being in love with a boy who is immature and still sucks his thumb in private. She is also worried about how her skin has betrayed her, which I take to mean skin color, most likely black. She is preoccupied with death and dying, for she says, “what if I die before morning.” With all the different issues she has to worry about, what bothers her the most is that her mother is unapproachable and not concerned with her teenage problems: “and mamma is in the bedroom/ with the door closed.” This line is repeated at the end of each stanza to make the point that her mother is not there for her through each crisis she faces.
The teenager clearly needs her mother’s …show more content…
Her mother could be a single parent who is just too overwhelmed to deal with teenage problems because of what she’s going through herself. Or her mom could be a drug or alcohol abuser unable to function. It could be health issues that cause her to barricade herself away. We are not told of the circumstances of her mom locking herself in her room, but we image it has to be something extreme to ignore her teenage daughter at this crucial time in her life. There is no mention of a father in the poem, so I have pictured them living in a small two bedroom apartment. Again, since there is no mention of a setting, we are free to image different scenarios taking
English 1302
October 12, 2015 Hanging Fire
Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire” is a short poem of thirty five lines of free verse, without a regular rhyme scheme or meter. The persona, a fourteen-year-old female, uses simple vocabulary, declarative sentences, and speaks directly to her audience, making readers aware of her anxieties, isolation, and loneliness. Like a typical teenager, she complains of things that seem minor to adults, but are a big deal to a fourteen year old. For one, being in love with a boy who is immature and still sucks his thumb in private. She is also worried about how her skin has betrayed her, which I take to mean skin color, most likely black. She is preoccupied with death and dying, for she says, “what if I die before morning.” With all the different issues she has to worry about, what bothers her the most is that her mother is unapproachable and not concerned with her teenage problems: “and mamma is in the bedroom/ with the door closed.” This line is repeated at the end of each stanza to make the point that her mother is not there for her through each crisis she faces.
The teenager clearly needs her mother’s …show more content…
Her mother could be a single parent who is just too overwhelmed to deal with teenage problems because of what she’s going through herself. Or her mom could be a drug or alcohol abuser unable to function. It could be health issues that cause her to barricade herself away. We are not told of the circumstances of her mom locking herself in her room, but we image it has to be something extreme to ignore her teenage daughter at this crucial time in her life. There is no mention of a father in the poem, so I have pictured them living in a small two bedroom apartment. Again, since there is no mention of a setting, we are free to image different scenarios taking