Rebirth and Sun and Wood

 


"The fire spat fat sparks up at pines lining the quarry, up at the moon.

 “Know what fire is?” Knife Grinder’s cough’s a dying man’s cough. “Fire’s the sun, unwindin’ itself out o’ the wood.”

This sentence is very powerful in my opinion. Fire represents many powerful things in history and other sources of media. Fire has a destructive force, it can burn away entire cities, forests and even currently with the California wildfires burning away houses we are still seeing the effects fire can have on humans and the earth. But fire can also represent rebirth, after everything is burned away, there is a new start, there is space to rebuild. Even in taking care of prairies, they use fire to help the growth of areas. The sun is also a powerful metaphor in many cultures. The sun can represent power and glory among other things. This imagery is strong because when you think about it, the wood is losing its glory as the strong tree that stands against nature and it is giving up its glory and power (the form of the sun coming out of the wood) into something tangible and that serves a purpose such as the fire that was the result.

To me this relates to when Jason has to leave and start a new life because his parents are getting divorced. Jason talks about how he has to go to school on Monday as the new kid whose parents just got divorced, and while he's upset about this, this is his new chance for him to shine and become the sun that rose out of wood.

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