Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Like a House on Fire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humiliation and Masculinity
Chaos vs. Order
Intimacy, Communication, and Humor
Summary
Analysis
The narrator feels ashamed as he watches his wife and his son, Sam, “lugging” their newly purchased Christmas tree towards the car. Feeling judged by the “Rotary guy” who sold them the tree, the narrator explains that he cannot help because he has a back injury.
Through the story’s opening, Kennedy highlights how the narrator’s sense of worth is strongly tied to his narrow definition of masculinity. The narrator feels embarrassed precisely because he lacks physical strength, a traditional benchmark of manliness. His feelings of humiliation are only heightened when another man—the “Rotary guy”—shames him, thus reinforcing the narrator’s belief that his back injury has made him somehow inadequate.
Themes
The narrator notices some graffiti outside the subway that says “only eight shoplifting days till Christmas,” but decides not to point it out to his wife, Claire, like he normally would. Claire “exaggeratedly” checks her watch as she secures the Christmas tree to the car, signaling that she’s in a rush for work.
Kennedy subtly indicates that there is some tension in the narrator’s marriage when he feels unable to laugh with Claire about the graffiti. The reader learns later that humor is very important for the couple, and this moment foreshadows that importance. Further, through the references to the subway and the graffiti, Kennedy draws attention to the modern urban setting of the story.
Themes
Once at home—and as Claire hurries off to work—the narrator admits that Claire makes “very little eye contact” with him at the moment. He blames the fact that he hasn’t been able to work due to his back injury. He’s been off work for four months now, and he continues to “fail each week to bring home any sort of pay cheque.” Meanwhile, Claire is both working as a nurse at the hospital and caring for her injured husband at home.
The narrator perceives himself as a failure because he cannot financially support his family—another example of how his limited definition of masculinity causes him to feel insecure and ashamed. When he notes that Claire doesn’t make eye contact with him, he chooses not to tell her how that makes him feel, preferring stoic silence instead. Through the tension described here, Kennedy suggests that effective communication is essential for successful and loving relationships.
Themes
In the afternoon, the narrator disobeys his physio’s instructions and climbs up the ladder to the attic in search of Christmas decorations. As he pulls boxes of ornaments towards him, he panics on the ladder and drops the boxes onto the floor. The narrator feels an excruciating “jolt” of pain in his back as he hears the decorations “crunch” and break below him.
In a desperate attempt to be useful—and perhaps to regain a degree of self-respect—the narrator climbs the ladder, even though he knows that it will be risky for his back. It is intended as a selfless act, motivated by his desire to do something nice for his family. Ironically, however, his efforts just cause trouble, as he ends up breaking the decorations. Additionally, his family actually needs him to prioritize his own recovery and take his physio’s instructions seriously. His stubborn efforts to live up to his idea of what a husband and father should be only make things harder for the family.
Themes
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As he inspects the damage—numerous shattered ceramic ornaments—the narrator notices that from the broken nativity scene, “only the baby Jesus […] remains miraculously unscathed.” His three children—Ben, Sam, and Evie—pay little attention to him as he walks past with the box of broken decorations. The narrator resigns himself to the fact that his children have frequently been “glued to the TV” since he has been their primary childcare provider at home.
The broken nativity scene—which the reader later learns Claire has had since she was little—symbolizes how fragile the narrator’s marriage is. In trying to help, and make things better between him and his wife, the narrator actually ends up causing further destruction. On top of feeling incompetent, the narrator also believes he is failing to raise and care for his children adequately, which is another source of humiliation and shame.
Themes
The narrator tells the children to turn off the TV so that they can all decorate the Christmas tree, but his oldest son, Ben, tells him that only Evie is interested. When the narrator checks with Sam (who would ordinarily be excited to decorate the tree), asking if he really doesn’t want to decorate the tree, Sam confirms, looking towards Ben for approval.
The narrator feels that he has been losing control over many aspects of his life since his accident. Here, he feels his parental authority slipping away, as well as the destabilizing feeling that he doesn’t understand Sam anymore.
Themes
The narrator notices how disappointed Evie looks, so he once more instructs the boys to turn the TV off and help him. When Ben refuses, replying with “delinquent surliness,” the narrator resorts to shouting, commanding the brothers to help. As the narrator places the television remote far out of reach, he feels an agonizing “stabbing” in his back.
Unable to positively encourage Sam and Ben to engage in the family activity, and feeling his control quickly slipping away, he snaps at his children. Immediately afterwards—almost like a punishment for shouting—he feels a sharp pain in his back as he swings around to confiscate the remote. Later, the narrator will describe how he sustained his injury in the first place: angry and desperate to exert control at his job as a tree-feller, he had swung his arms around to remove a stray branch. The parallel between that moment and this one makes it seem like the narrator has not learned from his mistakes and continues to behave in a reactionary way when things are beyond his control.
Themes
Throughout the tree decorating process, the narrator hops from “foot to foot” in pain, conscious that he’s probably ruining the occasion for his three children. Evie notices that he is uncomfortable and, instead of asking him to lift her up so she can place the fairy on top of the tree, she hands him a cushion and tells him to lie down and rest. The narrator feels defeated, comparing himself to “a beaten dog.”
Despite the narrator’s aggressive reaction to the boys’ disinterest, Evie responds kindly and lovingly when offering him a cushion. However, the narrator is too preoccupied with his own insecurities to cherish this sweet moment with his daughter. Feeling self-pity, he describes himself as “a beaten dog,” again letting his pride and ideas about how he should be cloud his interpretation of what’s going on around him.
Themes
Just as the narrator begins to lie down, Sam reminds him about the remote control, but it’s too late—the narrator has already begun his slow and painful descent towards the floor. He instructs Ben to climb the bookshelf to retrieve the remote control, chastising himself sardonically for being the best “father of the year.” He laments how his “entire identity” is bound up in his injury.
Putting Ben in potential danger by asking him to climb the bookshelf, the narrator realizes that his parenting skills are lacking. He feels useless and inept, embarrassed by his inability to entertain or protect his children as he feels that a father should. Kennedy draws attention to the all-consuming nature of illness or disability, which often causes people to feel that their personhood has been reduced to their ill health.
Themes
When Claire returns home, Ben tells her about the broken nativity scene and the narrator can sense her unspoken despair and frustration. In a brief and “excruciating” exchange, she tells him that she’s been offered triple pay for working over Christmas Eve. He recalls how they had laughed about his diagnosis at the beginning, how positive Claire had been about his recovery, and reflects on how much has changed between them since he sustained his injury nearly sixteen weeks ago.
The narrator describes his and his wife’s communication as “excruciating.” Here he feels his emotional stress in physical terms, likening it to his back pain. The narrator feels upset when he is unable maintain control or order over his life, and the Christmas Eve shift at the hospital represents one more obstacle standing between him and a “normal” family Christmas. Additionally, Kennedy suggests here that humor is an important aspect of the couple’s marriage. Indeed, the narrator uses humor as a barometer with which to measure the success of their relationship. The fact that he and Claire are no longer laughing about his diagnosis suggests that their relationship is under strain.
Themes
The narrator describes how he has recently witnessed a new, professional side to Claire “for the first time” since she’s been caring for him. Typically, Claire had been the “slapdash one” in the relationship, while the narrator is a perfectionist. He recounts how he injured his back during his job managing a team of tree-fellers: he saw “an errant bit of cypress bough” that a new employee missed and angrily went to cut it down, and the combination of stress and effort caused the injury. Now, the narrator bemoans how soon his sick pay will run out.
Kennedy reveals how the couple normally preserve a public-private divide in their relationship, where neither one of them bring their professional personas into the domestic realm. This divide is inverted, however, when the narrator observes Claire’s strict, organized professionalism. The collapse of the boundaries between work and home represents how the couple’s relationship has been thrown into chaos since the narrator’s injury. What’s more, the narrator’s description of the moment of his injury shows how anger and perfectionism essentially caused the agony that’s now disrupting the family.
Themes
The narrator describes at length how he has been “driven mad” by the untidy state of the house, and the fact that he is in too much pain to clear up the accumulating mess and “fluff” surrounding him. When he shares this concern with Claire, she replies “brusquely,” refusing to remove the cobweb that’s been bothering him. Then she tells him that she’s finished all the Christmas shopping, but that she’s going to leave him in charge of wrapping the presents.
The narrator’s desire to master and overcome the household mess represents his need to maintain steady control over his life. Of course, the narrator has almost no control over his situation, and therefore his attempts to gain control become increasingly fraught.
Themes
The narrator apologizes to Claire about her nativity set, which he knows she’s had since she was a child. She replies, laughing, “funny how everything except the Jesus broke.” Meanwhile Evie has been making her own nativity set with her numerous plastic dolls and toys—“Christmas designed by Disney and Mattel.”
With the survival of the baby Jesus figurine, Kennedy suggests a symbolic opportunity for the couple to salvage their relationship. Jesus Christ—the “savior” of the Christian religious tradition—figuratively saves the narrator and his wife from another argument and instead allows them to laugh together. Humor is an important form of communication for the couple, and here they are able to laugh together for the first time in weeks.
Themes
After seeing how Evie saved the nativity display, the narrator tells his wife not to “do the Christmas Eve shift” at the hospital, but Claire says she has to. The narrator internally compares this Christmas with the year before, when the couple had happily splurged his overtime pay on gifts for the children and a family holiday.
Evie’s efforts to recreate the nativity scene help improve the narrator’s mood, prompting him to communicate with his wife—verbally—in a way he was unable to earlier that same day. Realizing how much he values family, he asks her not to work on Christmas Eve. However, it’s too late; Claire has already made up her mind to work the late shift.
Themes
As the narrator lowers himself to the ground like “an old-age pensioner who’s dropped something”—in order to retrieve a pair of Sam’s shoes from under the couch—Claire accuses her husband of “Control freakery” and implores him to go for a walk or do some exercise. She demands to know why he has positioned himself right “in the middle of a busy family room” and likens him to “Central Control.”
This argument demonstrates how diametrically opposed the narrator and his wife are; while she is relaxed and embraces chaos, he requires order and control. Usually, they strike a healthy balance between the two, but the stress and financial strain of the narrator’s injury have disrupted their normal balance. Claire suggests that the narrator’s obsessive need for control is selfish and damaging for their family; far from making things perfect, his perfectionistic tendency only makes a difficult situation worse.
Themes
Shocked by Claire’s accusation, the narrator responds by explaining that he “can’t stand all this…chaos” in the house. He reminds Claire that he isn’t exaggerating the seriousness of his injury, even though it’s not clear why it hasn’t improved yet. She replies: “I’m not saying you’re faking it, for crying out loud. Why would you put us all through this?”
The narrator struggles to articulate how he is feeling to Claire, as indicated by the ellipsis in his assertion that he “can’t stand all this…chaos.” Kennedy suggests that the narrator’s fixation on the household mess is his way of dealing with the fact that his entire life is in “chaos;” micromanaging the household is his small way of trying to gain control. Therefore, his complaints about the house are not really just about the house after all, but rather a manifestation of much deeper insecurities, which he is unable to express.
Themes
The narrator wishes to tell Claire that his situation—the constant agony, the shame, the fact that his family step over him as if he’s not there—is far worse than what she is going through. Instead of articulating this, however, he retrieves “one of Evie’s Polly Pocket dolls” from the floor.
Again, the narrator chooses to focus on external messes—like cleaning up Evie’s toys—rather than communicating his insecurities to his wife directly.
Themes
When Claire is in bed, the narrator opens her laptop to check whether “gentle exercise is a good thing” for his condition. He can see all of Claire’s previous searches, and notices that she recently typed “back pain psychosomatic” into the search engine. “Hey, thanks, Claire,” he thinks to himself.
Through the reference to psychosomatic symptoms, Kennedy indicates there is a correlation between the narrator’s emotional distress and physical ill health. The more stressed, upset, and out of control he feels—by the mess, by his own uselessness, by his slow recovery, and even by the simple fact that life is inherently chaotic—the more discomfort he experiences in his back.
Themes
The narrator takes some painkillers and wraps all the Christmas presents, ensuring they are “neat and perfect and pintucked.” He imagines himself as a soldier in the army who has been training for years to prepare for this important task.
The narrator feels useful, important, and in control for the first time in weeks when wrapping the Christmas presents. By comparing this menial task to the work of a well-trained soldier, the narrator conjures up a fantasy of himself in the army. By granting himself the characteristics of militarized masculinity—strength, honor and power—the narrator reveals the extent to which his self-worth is bound up in traditional notions of masculinity.
Themes
As the narrator watches Claire prepare herself for the Christmas Eve shift at the hospital—tying her hair up and putting on her “squeaky” hospital shoes—he feels humiliated, even after the triumph of wrapping the presents. He tells her everything that he wishes he could do that day—taking the kids to hear carols, making Claire breakfast in bed—to which Claire simply replies: “Well, it can’t be helped.” The narrator reflects that he hears “the sound of everything she’s really talking about” underneath her literal words.
The narrator is pained to see Claire head off to work because he believes that, as the man, he should be the one to provide for the family financially. Again, it is the narrator’s own narrow definitions of masculinity that cause him to feel small and ashamed. His sense that Claire’s words hide some larger truth also indicates that, though he knows that he and Claire are having trouble communicating, he doesn’t know how to solve the problem.
Themes
The narrator reflects on the tension and distance growing between him and Claire. He remembers how they used to “get on like a house on fire,” meaning that they loved spending time together, but realizes now that this is actually an accurate representation of their current relationship—“these flickering resentments […] everything threatening to go roaring out of control.” He imagines him and Claire watching their house go up in flames, picturing her with “the hose,” while “he can’t get the firetruck started.”
The simile of the “house on fire” is a central symbol throughout the story. The size and power of the fire correlates to the strength, or weakness, of the narrator’s relationship with his wife. Since the injury, the figurative fire has been growing increasingly “out of control.” Given that the narrator is a perfectionist and needs order in his life, the roaring fire indicates the chaos and catastrophe he sees ahead for his marriage. Kennedy again portrays the extent of his self-loathing when he imagines that he is unable to “get the firetruck started.” This reveals that he fears he is unable to protect his wife or save his marriage—a reality made all the worse by the fact that he feels a real man should be able to do these things.
Themes
As the narrator makes dinner for his children, he is saddened by the realization that Ben is growing up fast. He remembers “with a sudden aching spasm” how the year before Ben had written “a note to Santa.” While they toast marshmallows over a Christmas candle, the narrator thinks about the “definition of psychosomatic” and wonders about the possible mental or emotional causes of physical pain.
Again, the narrator feels his emotions as physical pain, describing his sadness using the same language he would to describe his back injury: “sudden aching spasm.” Kennedy implies that the narrator does not have the language to communicate his feelings and emotions, so he explains them in bodily terms instead, perhaps because he fears undermining his stereotypically masculine stoicism. Further, Kennedy reinforces the idea that mental and physical health are intertwined, because the narrator’s repressed emotional life manifests itself physically through his relentless back pain.
Themes
The narrator takes a photo of Evie’s nativity scene, says some encouraging words to Sam, and shares a joke with Ben, thinking that “laughing feels like remembering what it’s like to be fit.” Early in the morning, he heads upstairs to place the Christmas sacks by the children’s beds. The journey is agonizing, and despite stopping for a break, he feels the “hot pain building anyway.”
Making an effort with Evie, Sam, and Ben, the narrator abandons his need to be traditionally masculine in favor of sharing a nice evening with his children. It’s particularly notable that laughing with Ben seems to be the narrator’s greatest moment of healing, even though the back pain returns as soon as the narrator confronts the tasks—like climbing the stairs—that have become so difficult for him.
Themes
Once upstairs, the narrator sees that Ben is awake. They share an affectionate moment despite the pain that the narrator is experiencing; he has to hold onto the door for support, but continues joking with his son anyway. Later, the narrator acknowledges that he is “insane” for climbing back up the stairs once more “just to get another look at each of them asleep.”
Kennedy realistically captures the essence of parenthood when presenting the fraught moments of family life alongside the precious, memorable ones. Despite his flaws, it is obvious that the narrator cares for his children very much, especially when he manages to protect Ben from seeing how much agony he is in. Tellingly, the narrator proves here that he’s more than capable of being a good father, even though he still feels emasculated by his injury; it seems that all of his fears about not being good enough are somewhat unfounded.
Themes
The narrator is contemplating the whole “mind/body somatic” element of his illness when Claire returns home from work. From where he’s lying in the living room, he can see that she’s bought the children’s favorite foods and snacks. He admits that Claire was right about how he “can see everything” from his spot on the floor.
Suffering immensely, the narrator feels defeated and vulnerable. In this state he is able to understand Claire’s point of view for the first time, and perhaps even accept that his actions have been selfish and overbearing.
Themes
The narrator asks Claire to do him a favor and stand on his back, to help relieve some of the pain. When Claire is hesitant, the narrator cracks a joke—“don’t tell me you wouldn’t love to walk all over me”—to which she gives a weary grin and replies, “that part would be my pleasure.”
Finally ready to embrace his own vulnerability, the narrator is able to ask for help. This vulnerability facilitates a closeness between him and Claire that hadn’t been possible before; until now he has been too preoccupied with his own need to be manly to accept his weaknesses. Using humor as a language of its own, the couple don’t need to explain themselves—instead they let their laughter soften the tension that had been present between them.
Themes
After she stands on his back and they both hear “something crack,” Claire crouches down beside her husband and says: “Temporary respite […] Happy Christmas,.” The narrator feels a “small heat build between” them, the start of “a controlled burn.” Here, in the early hours of the morning, they share a loving and intimate moment.
Returning to the story’s central motif—the house on fire—the narrator realizes that there is still hope for their relationship; he can feel a small spark of passion and love between them after all. Kennedy thus reveals how necessary humor is for the couple—without it they are unable to communicate at all, to the detriment of their marriage.
Themes
The narrator points out some glitter that’s been ground into the carpet, to which Claire replies: “Don’t they look great in this light.” In response, the narrator reaches to remove the “elastic band and grips” from her hair.
The narrator risks ruining this loving moment with Claire when he puts his need for perfectionism ahead of their reconciliation. When she responds kindly, however, making a joke and remaining positive, he manages to stay positive as well. Here he literally allows her to let her hair down, thus liberating her from her work persona, and embracing the relaxed, “slapdash” side of his wife’s character. This small exchange between husband and wife portrays the reality of love and marriage: two people—with their competing needs and wants—finding compromise and equilibrium when least expected.
Themes
