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Fireweed

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Fireweed

Fireweed, a short story written by Shy Brannon in 2009, is about a boy named Baluta, or Joel. Baluta works as an uneducated carpenter in the United States. He lives with his brother Jato and tis sister-in-law Sama. The tree of them had to flee from Liberia, because of war and destruction where Jato saw his father and Sisters death. I believe the story takes place around 1989 (– 1996,) just before the first Liberian civil war raged: The war will be coming our way soon.

The main themes in the story are taking things for granted or not just value the things you have in life. Some of the smaller themes or sub themes are war, culture differences and racism.
The main character is Baluta, who is originating from Liberia in Africa. He has moved to USA, and now lives in a ghetto with his brother and sister-in-law. He works as a carpenter. The story is a day in Balutas’ life. He has got a job for Mrs Giles (Tiffany), she is an over class women. That lives in a big house with her boyfriend/man. When he arrives to the house where he needs to fix some cabins, even though he doesn’t she the problem he starts to fix it. When he first arrives Tiffany is very suspect about him, and wont open the door for him, this look on her face makes him think of his father’s monkey-traps back in Liberia. Though the story he gets flashback, or jus remembering the time in Liberia, so we sort of get a background far about him. For example, Tiffany is wearing a diamond, which that makes him think of his father telling about the diamonds in the mountains. While he is fixing the cabins Tiffany’s telephone rings, and she have a discussion with her husband, about the colour on the walls, he can’t find the right colour in the shop, and she yells at him, the colour is Fireweed, and as soon she mention this colour Baluta gets another flashback. He remembering his grandmother jellying at him, because he took food without asking, and she sets him to the pound to capture fireweed. When he comes back from the capturing, some soldiers has come and killed his father and raped his sister. This was a day he didn’t want to remember.
So while Tiffany panics about them not having the fireweed colour, Baluta remembering a terrifying day in his life, probably the worst.

The story is written in a third person narrator. And as the summary assume the story is build up around flashbacks it gives us an far about the past, and if we didn’t have them there would be no story, or maybe there would but it wouldn’t give any sense, and we as the readers wouldn’t have any benefits from it.

As written in the beginning the theme is not taking things for granted. And I think it appears very well when Baluta helps tiffany with the cabins, he doesn’t see any thing wrong, but for her its all wrong so It’s a small problem in his world or in fact there aren’t any problem in his world, but for her its major. It also appears in there life situations, she have everything but don’t see it, right now her biggest problem is the colour on the wall, while he have seen his family death, and I assume he would give every thing to live like her.

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