Making Connections pg. 161:
The poem “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde illustrates a fourteen year old girl’s fear of death and her constant worry about petty things; she worries about a boy, her ashy knees, learning to dance for an upcoming party, having a room that is too small, being a better student than the boy she worries about, wearing braces, having nothing to wear for the next day, and all the while she is simultaneously worrying about if she’ll die before graduation, if she’ll die soon and her mother will still be in her bedroom when it happens. The silly things that she worries about are common among girls her age, but dying? It all seems a little strange to me, worrying about dying and still making time to worry about her looks.
In the poem “From the Diary of an Almost Four Year Old” by Hanan Mikha’il ‘Ashrawi, the young girl is preoccupied with the loss of her eye, which she lost when she was shot by a soldier. Her concern is that of a much younger girl, a nine month old girl, who was also shot; and she wonders if the soldier that shot her was the same one that shot the younger girl. She expresses that the younger child did not deserve the same fate she suffered, simply because she was a baby.
It seems that the two girls in the poems have nothing in common. The teenager is more concerned about worldly things while the child is wondering why a soldier would shoot a baby and how she will see the world now that she is missing an eye. The four year old seems to have a better grasp on life, a more mature grasp while the teenager is all too concerned with death and tomorrow’s outfit. It is ironic that a four year old who was shot is less plagued with the fear of death than a teenager who has never suffered a near death experience. The younger child almost seems to be fed up with life, simply because a baby was shot, and the teenager is fed up with life because she is going through the notions of being a teenager. The child does not fear death because she has seen it and does not wish to continue with life. I’m not exactly sure why the teenager fears death so much. Now, this is just an opinion, but from the lines “I’m old enough, almost four, I’ve seen enough of life, but she’s just a baby who didn’t know any better” I gather that she doesn’t like life too much because of the cruelty she has witnessed at such a young age. The main difference between these two poems is the mature attitude that the child expresses and the petty attitude that the teenager expresses. The child does not fear death as the teenager does and therefore has a better outlook on her life.
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Our responses to these poems were very similar! I think we both saw them the same way.
ReplyDeleteWe both agreed that the worries of the girl in Hanging Fire seemed to be things that are not really all that important, especially in comparison to the other girl’s problem. I also think that it is weird for a 14 year old to be so concerned about dying. I do not remember ever being worried about death at that age. I rarely even think about it now. It kind of seems like maybe there is not anything concrete for the older girl to be worried about in her life so she just worries about anything and everything. The younger girl has already suffered so much that she does not even seem concerned with herself anymore and is just worried about what life will be like for the baby. She is upset that someone that young has suffered, even though she herself is only four! I found it really interesting that the four year old could have such a different and more mature attitude about life and death than the 14 year old, just like you said.
I think Hanging Fire was about a girl who's feeling ignored by her mother and scared that her life has no meaning. She's thinking about committing suicide and how her mother won't even care to stop her. All the things she's worrying about are trivial compared to what the four year old has been through but to her, they surmise to a pointless existence. These are all the aspects of her life, the mundane details, that weigh on her day in and day out that make her self conscious and destroy her sense of worth. They may seem trivial but do you ever notice when big things start to go wrong, you fly off the handle and the simplest ones?
ReplyDeleteThe four year old shares the feeling of not wanting to live but for a different reason. This girl feels she has seen the worst in the world and can't imagine living in it a moment longer. She lacks the capability and the maturity to know that there is good worth living for. She figures she was lucky to have made it all the way to 4 before losing her eye, as shown by the month old, and thinks the world is simply horrific and painful all around. If something so horrible has happened and she's only 4, what other monstrosities lie in her future. She's given up because she doesn't want to suffer this way. This is just my opinion but maybe it can offer some other point of view. I enjoyed reading your blog too, your thoughts are well explained.
I much agree that the young child has a much better grasp on life than the teenager, because she has struggles. The things she has went through have given her character the teenager cannot understand. I am led to believe that maybe the teen has recently had someone close to her die, because of her infatuation with death, and dying, maybe it was sudden as well. There is clearly nothing wrong with her, yet she is worried about dying and not specifying when. I like that you pointed out that the girl is more occupied with the fact that a younger child than herself is getting mistreated, and explain that she feels that child didn't deserve it, yet never questions why her? She is only four and has seen more distress and sadness than most of us see in a lifetime. The fourteen year old also seems to not have a good motherly figure in her life, she is very repetative about her mother being behind closed doors. This leads me to beleive she isn't around very often, which is never good for a child, let alone a teenage girl go through the changes into adulthood.
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