Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde - Speaker

“Hanging Fire” is another story about youth, expect with much darker implications. Instead of youthful bliss, Lorde describes an adolescent nightmare. The speaker is fourteen with acne (my skin has betrayed me), “ashy knees,” no ambition (“There is nothing I want to do”), braces and suicidal thoughts. She keeps wondering if she would “live long enough to grow up” and “what if” she died.

The line “and momma’s in the bedroom with the door closed” suggests that either her parents don’t regard her or are dead. She’s further tortured by the fact that “Nobody even stops to think about my side of it.” No one understands her and she feels cheated by the world. She feels cheated that despite having higher marks, she’s not on the math team, and being the one wearing braces. The use of “how come,” and “why do,” suggests frustration about her current situation.

The speaker’s realizes that the world is full of lies and deceit and the only way she’ll be told the truth is if she died. She realizes how false people are to each other.

Hanging Fire - To delay

Pg.872

2 comments:

ashleigh said...

As I reread this poem I realized how the author was emphasizing the fact that the “mother was in the bedroom with the door closed”, every paragraph ends with that statement and it proves how the speaker is experiencing life’s trials, and needs emotional help from a mother who is not willing to give it to her. It is interesting that you found that the title means to delay, it shows how the speaker is in a type of limbo in that she cant progress or retrogress because she needs help in solving her emotional issues.

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