Tone When on Fire

The climax of the story is when Brent lights himself on fire; the reader knows that that is what the first part of the story is building up to and that is what the memoir is centered around. However, for being the main focus of a 319 word novel, this entire scene is about two pages long and Brent is on fire for a paragraph. And that's it.

What is also interesting about the scene is the way in which it is presented by the writer. There is description of the pain, "all over me, eating through me... This hurts too much," but there is no extreme pathos in this description as I had been expecting (17). It is brief and to the point. Sentences are straightforward: "I fall down. I'm going to die... I unlock the door and open it. My hand is all black. I walk out" (17). The scene feels dream-like, as if it is not really happening. The short sentences add to the surreal feeling because the action seems to float along.

The tone is really what makes this scene feel so surreal. It feels like a dream to the reader because the author is talking about it as if it were a dream. He describes everything almost objectively. Even the parts concerning pain seem to have little involvement from the author. It does not feel like you are reading someone describe the time when they set himself or herself on fire. It feels like you are reading someone describe someone else being on fire, but the person doing the describing is a machine.

The details presented are matter-of-fact. Nothing is gloomy or shocking and the description is very objective for such an intense experience. Taking both of these into account, my final judgement on the tone would be that it is matter-of-fact, which is incredible because we're talking about someone lighting themselves on fire here. I think that as Brent went through the actions it must have felt very matter-of-fact for him at the time so it wouldn't make sense for the author to embellish it with loads of pathos upon remembering it. Honestly he probably didn't want to. As a reader, I'm glad he didn't. The author's apparent removal from the scene makes it easier for a reader to stomach what is happening in the scene and to not throw the book out the window because reading about a fourteen-year-old being on fire is not a comfortable experience. In this sense, the tone of the on-fire scene is realistic in the sense that it is probably exactly how fourteen-year-old Brent felt at the time but also comfortable for the reader to understand and the author to write about.