The poem Hanging Fire is about a boy being neglected and the troubles he faces. It can be about any boy, depending on the reader. It can be a boy living in New York and goes to school or in poverty in Africa. The poem is made to show that there are many perspectives of what kind of boy this is because its very vague.
The speaker is a boy. His identity shows that he faces many problems like having the wear braces, living in a dirty place, and not being picked for the Math team. He's afraid of having too little time and whether he was going to die very soon. With addition with all his worries and troubles, he is being neglected by his mother who is always "in the bedroom with the door closed".
The poem is written in stanzas and always ends with two lines:
with the door closed."
This poem doesn't rhyme. There are no rhyming words in their whole poem. The two lines that end off every stanza (see above) sort of conclude each stanza, signifying that the paragraph has ended. The poem has a rhythm with those two lines at the end.
The poem has a lot of imagery -almost in every sentence. In lines 6 to 7, I can picture a young boy with dirty and ashy knees from living in the streets. I can also see a bedroom door closed whenever I read the last two lines of a stanza, showing the mom's door closed and keeping him from approaching her. He is still in an empty small room when I read line 14 and I also hear sad songs when I read line 15 to 16, like it was at his funeral. He's now wearing braces when I read line 30 and only having one set of clothes. As the poem dies out, I see the boy standing outside a door, supposedly to be the mother's bedroom door; as if she didn't want to care about him.
