Exploring Themes and Techniques in 'Like a House on Fire' Essay

This essay provides an analytical interpretation of Cate Kennedy's short story, 'Like a House on Fire', exploring themes of humanity, family relationships, and the impact of time and expectations. It examines the story's realism and its ability to inspire compassion, as well as the positive and negative impacts on characters' lives. The essay also includes a creative response in the form of a poem, 'Widowed and outside the Delivery Room come from Immigrant Chronicle', analyzing its themes of sadness, grief, and loss. The analysis delves into the poem's use of language techniques such as personification and simile to convey the emotional journey of a woman dealing with loss. The essay references various sources to support its arguments and offers a comprehensive understanding of the literary works. The story reflects love and companionship of all the members who live in their family but on the same time, the story also creates negative impact that when a husband got injured and suffering from a back pain but he feel so lonely because no one is there to help him at this time also.

Like A House on Fire

Table of Contents
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Analytical interpretation on 'Like a House on Fire'....................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
Creative response of a poem 'Widowed and outside the Delivery Room come from Immigrant
Chronicle'....................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

TASK 1
Analytical interpretation on 'Like a House on Fire'
The story 'Like a House on Fire' is a real story and help readers to understand their own
humanity which, in return allows them to view humanity in others. The story is quite real, which
inspires compassion and consider the impact of time as well as expectations on all characters
relationship (Damayanti, 2017). A The story totally reflect a positive sign of humanity, love and
humbleness, that every person must have these qualities in order to sustain in his own life. The
play mainly reflect love and companionship of all the members who live in their family but on
the same time, the story also creates negative impact that when a husband got injured and
suffering from a back pain but he feel so lonely because no one is there to help him at this time
also.
By reading a the story, it has been analyzed that the play also creates positive impacts on
the audience or readers such that they understand the meaning of humanity, which is necessary to
have in every person and also explain how a family help or support a member in his inverse
situation (Reid, 2017). In this story, husband is suffer from a back pain and even think that might
be his injury will take another drastic face but on the other side which create negative impact
upon his life that he feels helpless and did not contribute anything to his family while his sons
are so busy in watching TV shows and did are not affected from their father’s injury and
ultimately a man changes his perspectives as well as attitude towards his family which at last
affect himself only. Even a wife of his also faces another serious problem because she is also
quite upset with her husband's injury and found that her children are so busy in playing or
watching T.V. Only, they did not care for their parents (Pennycook, 2017).
The story is quite real and is totally different from other storiesy because it helps to
spread humanity as well as love towards a family. The play also shows a reality that actually
happen in every person's life and in that situation what initial steps must be taken in order to
overcome those problems. For example, as a husband feels so lonely at a time of injury that no
one come to support him or gives a sympathy in order to face that and on the same time his wife,
help him to overcome from those situation but his sons are so busy his with their own routine
life. Even they did not have time for their father (Gidoni and Rajuan, 2018). The whole play
helps to present various ideas regarding how importanthow important humanity is in every
people's life. The story is quite realistic because it shows exact those situations which is actually

happen in recent time and also creates direct impact on every reader's life. Most of the audience
response is positive as they learned many good things after watching this play and even they also
understand understood a deep meaning of humanity as well as family love, which is shown
through this act.
As the overall play is quite creative and it help us to analyses in a depth as well as
detail. The play 'Like a House on Fire' is chose because it is a short story format which really
work in a creative manner and help us to identify a gap as well as silence. According to Whelan,
VCE is considered the best and suitable outcome which support mature society as well as
personal relationship between every family members. As this text is consider the most suitable
among all because it help to raise their morale as well as decrease social voilence, oppression
that affect students as well as their family members.
But on the other side, it has been argued by Dooley that VCE doesnot suitable for
literature and theatre studies but good for English drama or play. By reading VCE text book
stories, students or readers are really compliments the creative text response because it mainly
focus on narrative structure in every short story. But the end of the story is not so good because
there is another breaking point in their marriage and Cate Kennedy who is generally known for
ending her stories without resolution. That is why consider suitable text to choose any short story
from this.
TASK 2
Creative response of a poem 'Widowed and outside the Delivery Room come from Immigrant
Chronicle'
As this poem is related to a women gardening and the whole poem does not have regular
rhyme and meter. The poem reflect past of a woman through a movements andmovements and
description of her gardening. The whole poem is completely based upon a theme of sadness,
love, grief etc. It also gives a message to all readers that it is quite hard to live whole life without
a person who is no longer a part of it now (Old and New world, 2018). The whole poem revolves
around four basic life aspect that is sad, grief, happiness and loss which a women face after
losing her husband. The poet also write three types of poems, distinctive, prosaic style and
family poem. The poem 'Widowed and outside the Delivery Room' is related to family poem

which displays a deep character of a women and even at working condition, she is lost in her past
memories of her husband who was is no more.
The poem has emotions, which can be shown by a woman who has lost so much but still
trying to get on with her current life without a the presence of her husband. While gardening,a
woman work in peaceful manner but on the other side she continuously thinks about her husband
who was dead and she feels his presence in her life. Even a poet also uses so many different
languages techniques such as personification., which helps to give a contrast., For example, the
poem is based on summer time which is joyful time where various types of flowers are blossom
bloomed but on the other side, a woman consider herself that after death of her husband she finds
herself in dark (McCormack, 2018). This gives a comparison of how a woman life is going so
smooth but after death of her husband, her life is completely changed and she is stuck in
loneliness, nostalgic and sad. Another language technique used is simile, which shows a
comparison of two different types of things with same meaning and these are used by a poet in
such an effective manner that directly links to a life of woman that she used to have with a
variety of memories she hadve with her husband.
A The poem Widowed and outside the Delivery Room is a right mix of emotions and a
real story, which every person have at a time when he or she lost someone. The book main
strength is to bring together old and new poems in single collection that helps to
immersedimmerse a reader in this poetry. This poem also contributed to create awareness and
realizes reader that what every person valuesd and also explore terms which a poet used while
writing a poem (Wilkins, 2018). The whole book as well as poem is attractively designed in
order to grab a attention of readers to have a look for a once and really even after reading whole
poem, my personal opinion is completely changed regarding emotions related to family which
exactly a woman feels for her husband.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Damayanti, I. L., 2017. From storytelling to story writing: The implementation of reading to
learn (r2l) pedagogy to teach English as a foreign language in Indonesia. Indonesian
Journal of Applied Linguistics. 6(2). pp.232-245.
Dooley, G. M., 2012. Review of'Like a House on Fire'by Cate Kennedy.
Gidoni, Y. and Rajuan, M., 2018. The use of drawing tasks as a creative strategy for pupils in the
English as Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Journal of Second Language Teaching
& Research. 6(1). pp.5-19.
McCormack, B., 2018. Using Literature to Teach Culture. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English
Language Teaching, pp.1-6.
Millington, R. and Smith, R., 2017. “A Few Bars of the Hymn of Hate”: The Reception of Ernst
Lissauer’s “Haßgesang gegen England” in German and English. Studies in 20th & 21st
Century Literature. 41(2). p.5.
Pennycook, A., 2017. The cultural politics of English as an international language. Routledge.
Reid, I., 2017. The short story (Vol. 34). Routledge.
Whelan, M., 2012. Like a house on fire [Book Review]. Bookseller+ Publisher Magazine. 92(1).
p.21.
Wilkins, J., 2018. Language, Memory, and Story: Writing across the Genres.
Online
Old and New world. 2018. [Online] Available
through:<https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/old-new-world-20070911-
gdr2pr.html>.