Explain the poem "Nighttime Fires" by Regina Barreca, emphazing the father and his fascination with fires.

What an interesting but heartbreaking poem for the
narrator!  “Nighttime Fires” by Regina Barrera uses the first person unnamed narrator to
recall a part of her life that as an adult she tries to
understand. 

This narrative poem is written in free verse. 
It is divided into two stanzas.  The first stanza describes the family following the
sound of the sirens and the smoke to find a fire.  The second stanza details the
narrator’s memory of the fires and her father’s reaction to
them. 

Several literary devices add to the imagery of the
scene:

Metaphor—“the wolf whine of the siren”—a comparison
between the howl of the wolf and the fire
siren

Simile—the fire engines
are described as moving “snaked like dragons.” In the Chinese parades, when the people
dress up like a dragon and the body moves from side to side…this is the impression that
the child received as she watched the confusion of the
scene.

Imagery… The scene to
the family was a festive.  The description is too happy for such a devastating event
when some family loses their home.

The description of the
father reminds the reader of the Grinch, whose heart was two sizes too small.  When the
narrator’s father sees all of the destruction of some rich person’s house, he smiles
from a “secret, brittle heart.”’

Stanza
1-

The father would find a fire that he
wanted to observe.  He would have the mother get all seven of the children up in their
pajamas even if they were sick, put them in the car and drive fast toward the
fire. 

Here is the key to the father’s
reaction:

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 “It was after my father lost his
job…

No information
is given about the circumstances.

The father likes to do
crossword puzzles with a pencil.  His anger would raise its ugly head when he snaps the
pencil in two.   

The children enjoy the smell of the fire
and watching the flames.  Yet, they are children and do not realize the
consequences.

2nd
Stanza

If there were a fancy car in the
driveway, the father especially enjoyed the show. The child saw that her father looked
as though something was being set right.  Again, the father shows his bitterness toward
the rich.

The narrator remembers bending her head back to
watch the sparks. 

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“My father who never held
us

Would take my hand to point to falling
cinders…"

Showing
his children, these fiery, destructive scenes make the otherwise, unemotional father
take the hands of his children and show them excitedly the cinders covering the ground
like snow.  How does this impact the children in their
future?

The mother knows that this is not a good thing. 
She watches the father, not the fire.  When the time, comes for the family to get back
in the car and return home… she is happy. 

The mother
sleeps on the way home.  The speaker remembers seeing her father’s face in the mirror.
She was awe-struck that his father’s eyes reminded her of the hallways in the houses
that were filled with smoke.

The poem describes a man who
is lost in his anger and does not think about the impressions that these scenes would
make on his children. In addition, it is hard to understand why the mother would
tolerate the children being taken out in the night with runny noses.  She must be afraid
of him.  She watches him and not the scene.  His anger makes the entire family suffer
for his adult problem that only he can fix.