Little Fires Everywhere Themes

Order and Control

Themes Of Little Fires Everywhere
Little Fires Everywhere Sparknotes
Little Fires Everywhere Book Summary
Little Fires Everywhere Questions

The story takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a planned community governed by rules as intrusive into personal expression as the allowed height of lawns and the exterior colors of homes. Everything about Shaker Heights has been planned to attain and maintain the appearance of order and order is simply another word for “normalcy.” That which is out of order is also out of sync with what is normal. This devotion to order and normalcy masquerades a more sinister intent: control of what is deemed to be normal and what is not. The obsession of Shaker Heights as an idea becomes concrete in the narrative focus of the story in the form of a child custody battle between the Chinese biological mother of a child and the white family trying to adopt her.

Themes Of Little Fires Everywhere

Little Fires Everywhere Sparknotes

Video work cited 1 & 2 video work cited 3,4,5 The American Dream Video “people find a way to start over,” like soil after a “prairie fire.” Throughout the book fire is literally and figuratively as a symbol. Fire is in the title and it is the cause of the main cause of the plot. Themes Little Fires Everywhere, the second novel of author Celeste Ng, primarily explores themes of race, image, identity, and family. Set in picture-perfect, orderly suburbia, it quickly becomes. Little Fires Everywhere is such an apt title for a novel that delves into the intricacies and angst that undoubtedly burns through some relationships—maybe none more so than mother and daughter. For a TV show that begins and ends with a blaze, “Little Fires Everywhere” is a slow burn in a sleepy town, but one rooted in passive racism and misogyny.

Raging Against the Machine

It is only natural that not everybody raised in a community obsessed with imposing its own standards of order and normalcy would quiescently accept it. Such a situation is bound to produce two extreme effects: those who support it without question and those who reject it wholeheartedly. This latter response—rebellious rejection of everything the Shaker Heights stands for—is embodied in the figure of Izzy, the youngest of the Richardson children. It is she who is immediately fingered, in large part because she has skipped town, at the novel’s beginning for having set “little fires everywhere” which have left her family “nothing but the clothes on their backs.' From there, the story flashes back to tell how things arrived at this state, inexorably making its way back to the beginning where the books ends with Izzy’s mother declaring she will spend the rest of her life looking for her runaway rebel if that is what it takes to achieve reconciliation.

Mothers and Daughters

Little fires everywhere theme song violin

Upon this foundation of order and disorder and the idea being normal or raging against normalcy is constructed a thematic examination of the relationship between mothers and daughters. The courtroom struggle for parent custody between Bebe Chow and Linda McCullough which pits biological claims against the perception of “best interests” plays out not just as a legal battle, but a morality play over what constitutes a “good mother.” Izzy’s mom is one of those Shaker Heights residents who has completely bought into the innate superiority of instituting order as the key to a planning future success. Izzy, however, is merely the daughter who most embodies the concept of rebelling against her hometown as a philosophical expression; Mrs. Richardson soon finds her careful planning and attention to order disrupted by unplanned activity on the part of first-born daughter, Lexie. And then, of course, there is the more uniquely idiosyncratic—for Shaker Heights—relationship between the latter-day counterparts of Hester Prynne and her daughter: Mia and Pearl Warren.

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere explores themes of mother-daughter bonds, appearance versus reality, and identity. The novel opens with a house fire spreading in the upscale, orderly, picture-perfect Richardson home in one of Shaker Heights’ finest neighborhoods. The only family member home, Mrs. Richardson, stands in her front lawn in her bathrobe as she watches the destruction of her immaculate home and life. Three of her four children get the word and gather around. Her youngest daughter, Izzy, the one that always had a knack for upsetting the natural order of things, is nowhere to be found.

The novel then flashes back to the previous year when a single mother and her teenage daughter, Mia and Pearl, move into the Richardsons’ rental house in a neighborhood in Shaker Heights lined with duplexes. But they needn’t worry; from any outward appearance, the duplexes appear to be single family homes, so the tenants can avoid any stigma associated with renting half of a house.

For all of the ostensible order, comfort, traditions and picture-perfect normalcy of the Richardsons, Mia and Pearl Warren represent the opposite. They have lived a nomadic lifestyle, guided by mom Mia’s artistic pursuits. Their pattern has been to pack up their few belongings, travel to different communities, and land in a place where Mia feels she will be inspired to create her photography art. She takes part-time work wherever she can find it to make ends meet, and they make it work with repurposing, thrift stores, and living very economically.

These two worlds converge when Moody Richardson, the youngest Richardson son, who is Pearl’s age, develops a crush on his parents’ tenant’s daughter, and he starts inviting her over to their house. The Richardsons welcome their new friend, and Pearl is enamored of the family and their lifestyle. At the same time, Izzy connects with free-spirited Mia. A rule follower to a tee, Mrs. Richardson has a hard time understanding her rebel daughter Izzy. Izzy won’t abide by the rules if she feels an injustice has occurred, and she questions the accepted “rules” of her privileged community.

Little Fires Everywhere Book Summary

All of this groundwork is laid out artfully by Ng as she eases the reader into the central plot, themes, and deep characterizations. She immerses the reader into the daily lives of the Richardson and Warren families. We scratch beneath the surface of the facades and see the different perspectives of the characters. The novel lingers on the characters in a deeply engaging way, the way one relishes devouring every aspect of a new love.

It’s not until about halfway through the novel that the central conflict occurs. A couple that is close with the Richardson family finds themselves in a custody dispute. They adopted a Chinese baby girl who was abandoned at a fire station. The mother surfaces, the media gets a hold of the story, and the tranquil community of Shaker Heights becomes consumed with the very personal, heart-rending ordeal. Ng gets inside the head of all sides without taking a position. The reader feels for the young, desperate Chinese mother and the generous, loving adoptive parents.

Mia and Mrs. Richardson find themselves on opposite sides of this dispute, and the clash reveals aspects of Mrs. Richardson’s personality that run counter to her impeccable image. She digs deep into Mia’s background and finds out something shocking that ties into one of the major themes of the novel, the bond of mothers and daughters.

Little Fires Everywhere is a layered, immersive novel in which the characters are so well developed that the drama and conflicts that unfold flow seamlessly throughout the novel. This is Ng’s second novel, and I read her first, Everything I Never Told You. I just hope it’s not too long a wait until she graces the literary world with more of her work.

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