The House is on Fire

Dee sees herself as an improvement of the life which she lived in her early childhood. She has been educated and persuaded into more liberal ways of thinking than the “simple” life that her sister and mother still reside in. The house was a symbol of oppression to Dee. She saw the house as an anchor that kept her from evolving into a more independent and educated person. During the fire, Dee watched this oppression burn to the ground, a perfect symbol of her being set free of the simple way of life she wanted to leave.

B. Dee has been educated and is very beautiful, based on textual evidence. Dee’s has high confidence in her ability and knowledge of the world. This causes Dee to be confident in “disastrous” situations. She feels superior others around her because of the education she has received. Through, this she thinks she is equal to men and whites, even though in this time she was considered not to be.

C. During the house fire, Maggie received major burns all over her body. These burns caused Maggie to feel “ugly”. In effect, Maggie is shy and tends to hide herself in embarrassment of the scars she possesses. Her mother even compares her walk to that of a “lame animal”. In the end of the story, while Dee is trying to take the quilts her mother had promised her, she did nothing. She sat and listened and even offered to let Dee take them. She values the quilts greatly, but felt inferior to Dee because of her low self-esteem and felt unworthy of the quilts.

D. The mother talks of her ability to do a man’s work better than the usual hobbies a woman would possess. She was the father that was not in the picture for the girls. She had to assume the role of caring mother and providing father at the same time. This caused her to...

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...d always got her way. Ironically, when she returns home she loves and appreciates everything she comes from. So, to complete the cycle, she did not get what she wanted for once.

4. 4. Dee is unsympathetic because she has always got her way. She thinks it should be her way and what she wants. The positivity in the victory of the mother over Dee’s demanding for the quilts is that Maggie has finally to be proud of, and that Dee learned that she can’t always get her way. In the last scene in the front yard between the three women holds many emotions. Dee feels sorry for the mother because she doesn’t understand the importance of her heritage, but Maggie is proud because for once she has bested Dee, who she has always felt inferior to. The mother obviously loves her daughter Dee, but feels she must stand up to her. She doesn’t want to, but it has to be done.