Burn Your House Down Essay

While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (burn your house down)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!

Burn Your House Down

While I was scanning our literature book in search of a poem that was to my liking, I came across William Carpenter’s “Fire”. At first I thought that I should try to find a shorter poem to write a paper on, but I decided to go ahead and read it anyway. At first I began to smirk at the seemingly humorous actions and thoughts of the characters in the story, but soon the underlying theme became very clear. This poem expresses an overall idea that I immediately connected to: the idea that society is a blanket over reality and that we don’t need all of our precious material possessions to be happy.

The poem begins with the narrator looking across the Penobscot River. He is watching another man with gloves and a fur hat franticly setting fire to his house. The narrator claims to be envious of this other man working so hard to destroy everything precious to him, and so early in the day. He says

“I envy his energy, since I’m still on the sun porch

in my robe, with morning coffee, my day not

even begun, while my neighbor has already piled

spruce boughs against the house and poured

flammable liquids over them.”

The author stresses the quickness of the man burning down his house. It’s hard to tell why he’s in such a rush, but it is probably the hurriedness someone gets after being forced to snap under unbelievable pressure. The man watching says that he would like to help him or at least bring him coffee and a bagel, but then it occurs to him,

”why should I help him when I have a house

myself, which needs burning as much as anyone’s?

It has begun to leak. I think it has carpenter ants.

I hear them making sounds at night like writing, only

they aren’t writing, they are building small tubular

cities inside the walls.”

It’s almost funny that the ants are unknowingly making their “natural” homes inside of the man’s “unnatural” home.

It’s almost as though the author is trying to express the idea that the troubles that seem to be so concrete in everyday life are really very trivial. Of course he is not...

You should cite this paper as follows:

MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 22 May, 2012 from
    <http://essaymania.com/12902/burn-your-house-down>

More College Papers

cross-cultural communication barriers essay
Thesis: A number of different factors contribute to cross-cultural communication barriers. This thesis will be proven through the examination of CanadaÂ’s past history, current policies and future plans concerning immigration and assimilation of immigrants into Canadian society. In the past, ef

Burton and his Auter essay
It makes you realize how abstract the film industry, and life in general, really is how much of it is just based on things that are out of your control. -------------------------------- Tim Burton is just a man like any other man, except any other man is not Tim Burton. Tim Burton

bury my heart at wounded knee essay
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee brownÂ’s Bury My Heart at Wounded knee is a fully documented account of the American Indian in the late 1800Â’s ending at the battle of Wounded Knee. Brown brings to Attention the storyÂ’s of torture not well known americans. The way the