For the Time Being:

Motif of Fire
Natalia Donlan
&
Chris Brown
Thesis/Intro
Throughout Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being, Dillard utilizes the motif of fire in
order to present her message of the importance in embracing the impermanence of
life, using sparks as her representation of ‘good’ and flames with ‘evil’.
Good - Sparks
“Baal Shem Tov delighted in the spark, the God within . . . If shells imprison the
divine, then all we see holds holiness . . . The one transcendent God made the
universe, and his presence kindles inside every speck of it,”(137).
❖ Essence of life
❖ Innate good that is present in all beings
Good - Sparks
How can evil exists? - “It can exist, because entrapped deep inside the force of
evil there is a spark of goodness. This spark is the source of life of the evil
tendency,”(139).

“‘They cling to material things as in sealed up wells . . . searching where they

can be set free,”(51).
❖ Good and evil are codependent
Good - Sparks
“Now, it is the specific mission of the Jew to free the entrapped holy sparks
from the grip of the forces of evil by means of Torah study and prayer. Once
the holy sparks are released, evil, having lost its life giving core, will cease to
exist,”(139).
❖ Good and evil are codependent

“When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all
the stones, and all the growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls
come out and cling to you, and then they are purified,”(137)
Evil - Flames
“...He burned their books: In fact, he burned every book in the empire except
those in his own library…” (Dillard 56).
“Christians killed the wellborn lady Hypatia, according to Gibbon, in a church;
they stripped her flesh with oyster shells, and threw the shellfuls of flesh,
‘quivering’, in a fire” (Dillard 139).

❖ Emperor Qin burns Confucian books

❖ Fire and negativity is a result of seeking something
that cannot be attained
Evil - Flames
“The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his
fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into
fire?” (Dillard 180).
❖ A devout Christian is unable to attain salvation after
devoting their entire life to meeting heaven.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Annie Dillard uses symbolism alongside the motif of fire to
demonstrate the importance in embracing the impermanence of life. The author
utilizes sparks to represent ‘good’ and flames with ‘evil’ to further convey this
message to her audience. Dillard encourages the neglection of selfish desires and a
want to attain something which cannot be controlled, and instead urges for an
acceptance of life for how it is in the present and to instead become in tune with
yourself and nature. In doing so, she shows that one may achieve their “sparks” when
they are able to appreciate life without vanity.