A Fireplace
The sooty, stained bricks that made up the fireplace were visible in the fire’s warm glow. It slowly heated the room as I began to realize I know longer needed to be wearing so many layers. Shadows danced and flickered on the walls around me. There was no need for electricity on a cold, quiet night like this when the fireplace was lit. The fire’s light cast a sleepy haze over the room, as we heard the wood kindle and crack with its heat. The flames grew higher, licking their way slightly further up the chimney. The shades of orange, red and yellow dancing in front of a red brick-lined backdrop was oddly soothing. I forgot about the worries that had plagued me throughout the previous days and listened to the soft conversation in the room, and the laughter that was around me. Everybody appeared to be so happy. Somehow the fireplace made the room cozier and safe; somehow the fireplace made our home happier and alight with the feeling that only comes when you know it is cold outside, but you are contentedly warm inside with the ones you love. The fireplace kept the cold, and somehow the dark, at bay.
The fireplace hot, too hot, it made the family uncomfortable; why should they be forced to gather for these insipid holiday traditions each year even when it was clear they did not want to? Sweat began to bead on a few foreheads as the annoyance of the crackling wood began to spread around the room. I began to long for the coolness that waited outside and could not wait until it was time to leave. The flames began to climb higher up the chimney and I longed to be them. Even the fire was trying to make an escape. I wondered what would happen if the fire got out of control and burned the house down. At lease then we would be able to leave. There were other families who sat around fireplaces, happy with one another, lazily drinking hot cocoa and talking about their day or year, simply enjoying each other’s company. That was not my family, and I had grown to hate this enforced tradition of sitting around the fire after a family dinner as the nights began to get cold when I longed to do anything but be around them. When I was little I loved the fireplace; I was intrigued by it. Now, sitting here with people who knew me no better than strangers on the street, all I wished was that we could fill it with cement and leave.
I thought it was best to achieve duality between the positive and negative by making it clear the fireplace had once warmed a family and made them feel safe and comfortable, making for a positive scene, and then warmed them almost too much, and under circumstances wherein they did not even want to be around one another. The moments begin relatively the same in order to express it is the same family, and use some of the same passages, also to express positivity and negativity. For example, the flames climbing up the chimney is entrancing in the positive narrative, while in the negative narrative, the narrator wants nothing more but to escape with the flames and goes so far as to wish the fire would burn out of control. I also ended the paragraphs different specifically to express a positive and negative feeling among the narrator and the family. In one instance, the family is happy with the fireplace and the fire because it is cool outside, the holidays are coming, and there is a special familial warmth in the home that only comes with these fireplace traditions. In the second narrative, the narrator is bored with these traditions and does not understand why they take place when the family does not know them at all. The narrator does not feel comforted by the tradition or the fireplace, but instead wishes to fill it with concrete and leave.
I learned a lot from this assignment, though primarily I was able to grasp how language can allow the same object, time, place, or feeling to change so easily. This can be applied to future writing assignments in an infinite amount of ways because it is important to understand the power of language and the implications it places on objects, memories, places, and people. The fireplace was a content memory because I used language to make it so, thus, it became negative because I did the same. I did begin to learn that I have a habit of using a parallel form of writing when attempting to change how an object is perceived, which is effective, but might get old if I am to continue repeating it. I will need to begin understanding other ways to get this point across, or employ other means in order to show positivity and negativity. Moreover, I began to understand how easy it is to begin a positive and negative narrative from the same point, but end entirely differently as an effective means to show different feelings. I enjoyed this process, and believe I can implement it in future writing endeavors, perhaps if one character changes their mind about something, or if two characters disagree. I wrote these two paragraphs as if I was writing for two people in the room who felt differently about the fireplace, and without mentioning that, the reader would never know and simply assume one was positive and the other was negative. Thus I also learned the reader will only know what I tell them, and I can use that to my advantage.
