BLAZE POEM ANALYSIS

How does the poet portray the fire and its significance in the character’s life?
The poet describes a woman who is married and has kids, who is unaware of her purpose in life
until a fire accident takes place at her ‘half known home’. The woman was talking to an
insurance man at the door when the fire breaks out. The poet has used dramatic irony here. The
woman before the fire was leading a very dull, cold and uninteresting life. Focusing on random
things in her surrounding, “half her attentions on her white border: cool blooms, shades of
everything cold. She waves to a neighbor sailing out with her pram. Behind her, the dull safety
of the house,” these lines depict the same. ‘the half-known caverns of her children’s bedrooms’
this tells us that how interested she was in her life. While chatting away unaware of the danger
that lies ahead until she smells the smoke coming from the kitchen. Panic takes over her and
her responses as she watches the fire burn over everything in patterns of black and white
(brightness). She thinks about what to save and for whom. In the end she just picks the cat
which can be seen in the lines “She scoops the cat and his one last little life from the bathtub
upstairs.” Which shows us how the poet compares the woman to the cat and the last little life
left of her. “She tells of the heat, describes the hungry fire, the raging beauty of it, the glorious
energy” these lines contrast with the lines present in the second paragraph and shows the shift
in the mood of the poem from in a very obvious way where she first describes the woman’s life
to cold, dull and not full of life. Later she describes fire to be raging, hungry, full of energy and
life. While the fire breaks out the woman thinks of her husband’s stony face, questioning
whether her survival matters to him as he never makes any time for her or gives her any
importance (but he finds no excuses for her). The fire in the woman’s life wasn’t a tragedy but
instead it was an eye opener for her. The truth coming into light (You should have seen. It was
like drowning in light!). while her children laughed at the melted Tupperware, eating cold meals,
she was just relieved to have survived though still trembling. Everything burnt, the toaster and
everything else in the kitchen but this incident got the woman thinking and re thinking her life.
The poet portrays the fire to be the burning truth which came out suddenly and with a bang in
the woman’s life. Which becomes an important turning point or wake up call in the woman’s life
as she rethinks her existence, importance and re thinks her life.