111 pages • 3 hours read
Sharon M. DraperFire from the Rock
Fiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Different Ways of Combatting Racism
One of the central questions of this story is what is the best and most effective way to combat racism? The author uses the historical context of the book’s setting—1957 Little Rock, Arkansas—to illuminate the many perspectives within the Black community in particular. Through the characters, Draper explores the roles of religion, education, legislation, community organization, individual actions, and ally behaviors in combatting racism. Though no one way is singled out as the best way to fight racism, the author makes it clear that every member of the Black community was engaged in the fight on a daily basis.
It took the efforts of an entire community, together with some white allies and the National Guard, to finally integrate a high school in Little Rock. The elder Pattersons represent the older generation, who focused their efforts on the church and their own segregated community. They relied on their faith to see them through, and they fought racism by leading morally upstanding lives in the face of hatred and discrimination. Aunt Bessie represents the economic challenges faced by domestic workers who relied on jobs within the white community for their livelihood. They sometimes had to tolerate racist treatment to earn even a meager amount of money. Miss Washington and Mrs. Patterson also represent the value of education in the Black community. Both women care and nurture the next generation of African Americans by teaching them the core academic subjects and lessons about how to survive and thrive in a racist world.
Sylvia, Gary, DJ, Reggie, and Rachel all represent the new generation of hope in the struggle against racism. They are the young ones who will finally integrate the schools, maintain interracial friendships, and speak out for change. Gary and Reggie demonstrate the anger and frustration felt by so many who were tired of waiting for change to happen. These are the young people who sometimes turned to violent confrontation to make their point. In this story, Reggie and the Zuckers suffer from the consequences of Reggie’s actions, but both he and Gary learn that maybe violence isn’t the best way forward. At the same time, the aftermath of the explosion brings together the Black and white communities in their support for a Jewish family that needs help. Rachel, a white student named Jim who helps Sylvia and DJ at the library, and an unidentified white woman on the news who sits with one of the Nine against the angry white mob, show that there are helpful allies in the struggle against racism. It took all of these efforts and more to enforce a 1954 court order to desegregate schools.
The Power of Representation
Like most inquisitive teenagers, Sylvia is curious about the world around her and the adventures life will hold. She seeks out possibility in the images she sees all around her. She likes to discuss her observations with her friend Rachel, her sister, DJ, and even her teacher, Miss Washington. Sylvia astutely notices and questions the messages she receives from magazines, TV shows, historical figures, and her own community. Through her observations and questions, she reveals the power of representation for young people growing up in American society in the 1950s.
Early on in the story, Sylvia reflects on her growing awareness of the patterns of discriminatory violence in the world when she comments on Rachel’s father being a Holocaust survivor and Leo Frank and Emmett Till getting lynched. Sylvia also credits her love of poetry to her teacher, Miss Washington, and she compares her own mother to the famous African American singer Marian Anderson. Sylvia and Rachel notice that TV shows like I Love Lucy only portray women as housewives and never as professionals. When Sylvia is doing a report for school, she is struck by the negative tone and disrespectful description of “Negroes” in her encyclopedia. She and DJ discuss how their father could never be President and how a Black woman could never be crowned Miss America because white people won’t allow it. Even in Ebony and Jet, the magazines created for the Black community, Sylvia sees beauty defined as light-skinned only. Sylvia remembers that her favorite childhood doll was a white doll because toy companies didn’t make Black dolls. She also notices the absence of Black dancers and contestants on TV music and game shows. She wonders why this must be so. When Martin Luther King Jr. appears in the cover of Time magazine, both she and her mother acknowledge the significance of this first and how it will likely make white people uncomfortable.
Sylvia recognizes the importance of these examples, and she realizes that members of both the white and the Black communities get the same messages about race, gender, and representation from these sources. When the Little Rock Nine finally integrate Central High, they do so on national television, creating a kind of visibility and possibility that empower young people and threaten the white establishment.
Courage and Community
By having a nurturing community of teachers and students who look like her and share her experiences in American society, Sylvia has a chance to make mistakes without being seen as a representative of her entire race the way she would in a predominantly white environment. She has a chance to learn what it will take to survive and thrive in a society that doesn’t want someone like her and sometimes doesn’t even consider her to be human. Between her supportive family, church family, and school community, Sylvia is immersed in a safe environment where she explores who she is and dreams of what she might become. She builds a strong foundation. While racism and discrimination might be barriers to her success, at least she will know not to blame herself or think herself undeserving or unqualified. That kind of courage, which she shows in her interview, comes from growing up in a strong and supportive community surrounded by people who can teach the younger generation about reality while also empowering them to make change.
This is the lesson Sylvia ultimately learns in this story: that courage comes from community. This is why Sylvia eventually takes her name off the list of students to integrate Central High. Even though she feels guilty and like she is somehow letting down her community, she knows that she needs to take advantage of the nurturing shelter and pride while she can. Her choice is an unexpected plot twist. All rising action points to Sylvia as being one of the students to integrate Central. By having her choose to attend a segregated school, Draper suggests that the most important element in the fight to integrate the schools is choice. All students should have the right to choose where they attend school. No one should be shut out because of who they are. Sylvia’s choice affirms the value of a self-segregating experience, in which students of historically targeted groups choose to be together for education or worship or anything else that provides shelter from the storm. In the end, Sylvia chooses her own self-preservation to make herself stronger, and she vows to prepare herself to take up the fight for the community in the future.
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By Sharon M. Draper
