The Motif Of Fire In Homegoing By Yaa Gyasi

The novel “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi tells us as readers narratives of different people that tie together through genealogy. This story also significantly focuses on the psychological side of a few characters such as Maame and, mainly in the end with Yaw. Throughout the story, something that really intrigued me was the Motif of fire: how it is portrayed during times of trauma, how it shows the significance of anxieties symbolically throughout the story, and how it also ties back to the family lineage of Effia in dreams.
Firstly, the motif of fire is portrayed during times of trauma due to the fact that in the beginning of the story, it starts with a baby name Effia being “born of the fire” (ebook 2). Effia’s mother Maame sets a fire that

allows her baby to be free of the place where she lived in captivity, and she too, escapes to go back to her home village away from the slavery that she endured. This then leads me to the start of how fire coincided with trauma and overcoming trauma. I am drawn to the this thought because Effia was born of fire, it signified that yes it must have been very traumatic for her as she grew older because she was never able to meet her birth mother. She not only didn’t have her real mother but, her step mother had abused her very badly. In the story it states, “by the time Effia had reached age ten, she could recite a history of the scars on her body” (ebook 3), and that is a great deal of torment that a child should not face. Sadly, that was one of the sacrifices that had to be made and being born of the fire was a way for her parents to get her as a baby out of being a slave since Maame was an Asante slave. Although the trauma of not having her mother really manifested in Effia’s life, I feel that if she did not go through the abuse and neglect with her step mom Baaba, she would not be the strong-willed women later in the passage.
Secondly, the continuous use of fire shows the significance of anxieties symbolically for the reason that it is used in most of the novel itself, and it mainly plays an important factor in lives of Effia's family, especially Akua, Yaw, and Marjorie.

As I stated in the beginning of the first chapter, Effia was “born of the fire” (ebook 2), and I feel that it signifies the destruction that Effia was soon to endure because of what her parents had done since they had taken her away from the Asante slave trade. In addition, fire affects Akua because, in her chapter, it portrays her as a “crazy women” because she would never sleep, she burned her two daughters to death, and she nearly burned her son to death but it left him with a scar for the rest of his life. Then, fire mainly affects the anxieties of her son because the scar on his face that he had gotten from the fire for the reason that he could not find a girlfriend or a wife for an extensive time of his life because most people were frightened by the scar on his face. Until he had met his now wife, who was first just his house woman who slowly got him to open up to her, and finally even got him to go see his mother because he resented her so much for his scar on his face. However, surprisingly, his daughter Marjorie is thought to be more fearful of fire than her father ever could be. And that was probably because she has a stronger bond with her grandmother Akua, despite the fact that Yaw never was close with his

mother even after he went to see her again.
Lastly, that brings me to how the motif of fire ties back to the lineage of Effia in dreams throughout the passage.

a few characters, mainly Akua and Marjorie have consistently had the dreams of the “fire woman” that manifests in their minds, making it the reason why they had such a strong bond with each other. In Akua’s chapter, she has many sleepless nights because she does not want to have the dreams of the fire woman. Then, Akua is driven crazy by sleep deprivation and burns her family's home while she is sleeping, also hurting herself doing so. But, with this manifestation of the fire woman, I think it links Akua back to Effia since she was born of the fire, and in one significant part of Akua’s chapter, it states, “Akua’s dreams were getting worse too. In them, the firewoman raged against the loss of her children. Sometimes she spoke to Akua, calling her, it seemed. She looked familiar, and Akua wanted to ask her questions” (ebook 170). It is almost as if her ancestors are trying to tell her what she did was awful but she knows that even though it seems like rage from the fire woman, she understands because it is coming from someone she may have known. And although Yaw had come to accept his scar as a part of him, I feel that he will never be able to escape the thoughts and memories that come with it, especially the comments that he still got when he and his family moved to

America.
In conclusion, the motif of fire portrayed during times of trauma because throughout the chapter of Effia, it leaves you feeling that the fire from the beginning signifies her only tie to her mother Maame and freedom from being in the slave trade. The story also showed the significance of anxieties symbolically throughout the story mainly in the lives of Effia's family, especially Akua, Yaw, and Marjorie because they had all went through their own trials and tribulations and were able to overcome them in their owns ways. And finally, the novel tied back to the family lineage of Effia in dreams through the manifestation of the fire woman within Akua and Marjorie. Effia shows them that although they have not met her, she is still with them through their hard times. And even with a statement in the chapter of Yaw when one of his students had said, “they say you were born of fire” (ebook 207), which made me bring the stories back to Effia’s and how she too was born of the fire.