Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde - Essay Example

The paper "Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde" is a great example of a literature essay. Characters and their symbolic use: 1. The fourteen-year-old girl represents adolescents who have their unique worries but unable to fix their minds to a single one and sort it out; rather, the mind jumps between all the worries; 2. The boy is immature and is probably significant in the difference in the maturity levels between girls and boys of the same age; 3. The girl’s mother seems indifferent to her daughter’s worries and anxieties and remains within closed walls; this symbolically represents any parent, who is reluctant to listen to the anxieties and fears of their adolescent children.

Themes: 1. Adolescent anxieties and loneliness; 2. Growing up and growing old; 3. Terms with reality-race and appearance Citations and how they support the argument: 1. (line 2) speaks of the first worry of the fourteen years old; 2. (line 31) tells the girl’s worries about not having anything to wear; she wants to put on the best appearance but cannot; 3. (line 6, 7) hint at the contemporary civil wars as a cause for the girl’s knees being ashy; 4. (line 8-10) say how insecure the teenager feels; 5.

(lines 11, 12) show the barrier the girl feels between her and her mother; she feels isolated, lonely and without anyone to turn to; 6. (line 16) expresses the girl’s fears whether she will survive to realize her dreams; 7. (lines 19-21) show the teen’s reluctance to do anything; nothing seems important or valuable in life, though there are lots to be done; frustration is evident; 8. (lines 24,25) show the yearning for someone who would listen and care for her worries; 9. (lines 26,27) hints at the racial difference, maybe, that he has made it to the Math class, while she has not; 10.

(lines 28-10) refer to the braces she has to wear and her disability that she wants to hide from others; A sense of urgency is felt and the girl suffers from insecurity. The voice shows frustration and loss of interest in anything that needs to be done. The period in which the poem has been written hints that the girls have braces on with her knees ashy may be due to the civil war and she constantly fears death due to the same. However, adolescence with its insecurity, confusion, frustration, loneliness, and the pressure to project the best appearance is well captured in the tone of the poem.

She fears growing old, wearing braces, and being black-skinned. The girl says there is no one who could empathize with her and look at her problems from her side. She seems to wait for a change or something to happen as during a hang fire. She is holding on breathless and with fear for the moment the truth about her will break.