Coming up with your analysis for ‘Like a House on Fire’ by Cate Kennedy?
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We also threw in a FREE sample analysis table (also known as a TEE table) and a sample paragraph for you!
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Summary of Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy
Key Characters
Context
Themes Explored in Like a House on Fire
Analysis of Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy
Summary of Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy
This short story centres around an unnamed narrator, locked in a rocky relationship with his wife Claire and their kids.
It’s clear that previously they were very much in love with each other, yet have been going through a harsh period of disagreements and fights. Everything changes when the narrator is the victim of a work accident that leaves him unable to effectively move due to his back injury.
The doctor stresses the need for him not to engage in physical exertion, and naturally, his wife and kids must adjust to this new style of living. His wife, a nurse, has to take multiple shifts at work to help sustain the family given her husband is incapacitated, and the narrator is thus filled with shame. The narrator watches helplessly as his family struggles to look after him, unable to help himself.
He is relegated to the floor of the kitchen where he must lay to alleviate stress on his back, and is left home with the children (Sam, Evie and Ben).
It particularly pains him to watch his wife unload the heavy Christmas tree alone from the car, as the narrator seems fond of this time of year and considers it a family tradition.
Due to the fact that he is helpless, the narrator begins to suffer in his inaction, and decides to retrieve the box of Christmas decorations from the attic to decorate the Christmas tree with the children.
This is against the doctor’s advice, however, and sure enough, the protagonist ends up breaking the content of the box as he falls. He manages to get back to the kitchen and asks his children to help him decorate with all that is left.
Claire arrives home tired and cannot stand the complaints of her husband about the mess in the house, despite them sharing a fun moment just before. She reminds her husband that he should have already recovered.
The narrator expands on the fact that his marriage is bipolar and volatile, “like a house on fire” that could burn down arbitrarily and unexpectedly.
While having dinner with his children one night, the narrator regrets the fact that they are growing up too quickly, and shares a wholesome moment with his eldest son, that is interrupted by further pain.
The narrator does not let this break the moment, however. The narrator gets his tired wife to stand on his back to help with the pain, she jokingly accepts, then proceeds by sharing a final wholesome moment with her husband.
Key Characters
The narrator
A strange reversal in traditional family roles occurs for the narrator.
Being unable to provide financially for his family due to his work injury, the narrator takes care of his children from a much closer proximity, a role that his wife had been performing due to her erratic shifts.
This is a source of discomfort for the narrator, who is unable to reconcile his new responsibilities with the role that societally he is supposed to play. He believes he is no good at his new role and thus feels insecure and frustrated.
His development as a character centres around him coming to terms with his injury and accepting a fate that he himself cannot change and thus learning to live with it. His wife is instrumental in making this happen, as their conflict makes him realise her importance both to the family and to his physical and mental wellbeing.
Essentially, the narrator is trying to battle a sense of chaos that has entered his life, and that he must come to terms with.
Claire
As the wife of the narrator, her character works as a foil.
This means she presents herself to be the opposite to the narrator. This is due to the fact she has to heavily adjust her life due to his injury, and essentially take his place as the main financial provider.
This is a factor that contributes to increased relationship pressures and increased tensions between her and the narrator, hence the frequent disagreements. Due to her role as a nurse, the shifts she takes have a debilitating effect on her.
Furthermore, when she is physically taking care of him, she assumes a cold and detached professional personality, as if she were at her job. This greatly distresses the narrator, and pushes him away.
Ben
Given the importance of Christmas as a tradition in the family, the narrator is concerned by how much his eight year old son is growing up.
The narrator remarks a great change in Ben’s attitude from one year to another, as he becomes much more sceptical and disillusioned with many aspects of life, as well as family activities.
Context
‘Like a House on Fire’ was written in 2012 during the full swing of Australian modernisation.
This was a time when human beings had to search and redefine themselves, as well as their relationships with others and new technologies, to embrace the new modern world.
‘Like a House on Fire’ is no different. Your analysis will be guided by how Kennedy explores the change in gender roles, the rocky aspects of a relationship, and the compromise and learning necessary to make it work. The characters are required to come to terms with, and figure out, moral and social challenges.
Kennedy enjoys writing in familiar scenarios, to force audiences to look deeper amongst activities and things that seem ordinary for meaning. This reflects her own lifestyle, just like any other person. This, in turn, makes her storytelling extremely familiar and relatable to audiences, as well as inviting.
Themes Explored in Like a House on Fire
Masculinity
An interesting dynamic characterises this story. The narrator is forced out of the typical masculine role he performs due to his injury, and thus has to face the fact that the primary financial carer for the family becomes his wife.
The issue isn’t one of position, but rather of acceptance. For example, the narrator struggles to accept that it’s his wife that has to carry the Christmas tree out of the car by herself.
He struggles to accept that she has to take more shifts at work, he struggles with his own children, and realises all of a sudden they’ve been growing up fast and that time has rushed by, hence his shock when learning that Ben no longer believes in Santa and is disinterested in family activities.
Forced out of his masculinity, the narrator finds himself in a sudden chaos that he did not foresee.
Order VS Chaos
Let’s get back to the idea of foils here. The narrator can be seen to represent order, given the meticulousness and care he takes while working on his job.
This is evident in the care he demands when overseeing maintenance of trees, and reveals his almost perfectionist nature. He is also very much addicted to control and neatness. Hence why he complains about the mess in the house and his obstinateness wanting to carry the Christmas tree. He feels sorry for himself being thrown into the chaos of domestic life, and thus wants to be a central part of whatever else is going on despite being physically unable to.
If the narrator represents order, then Claire — as a foil to him — represents chaos.
Claire is more comfortable with the inevitable mess that family life entails, that she is very capable to cope with, because she herself is described to be very like her children in terms of her neatness. This is yet another factor that puts husband and wife in contention.
The writer is thus trying to highlight the duality and friction between order and chaos, and the need of balance between the two for life to work — hence, why the two main characters have to reconcile with each other in order to move on.
Relationships
Kennedy packs all the difficulties of a relationship into a short story that only spans a couple of days.
We see the couple wrestle with insecurities on both sides: the narrator with his new place in the family taking care of the children, and Claire with her new responsibilities, as she has to financially take on the burden, ultimately putting pressure on her.
There is also the struggle with the children, and time passing by so fast. The narrator finds himself disoriented when he is forced to come to terms with the fact that his children are growing up, and that their childhood is almost over.
Finally, there is the foil dynamic between the two parents, who are incredibly different one from the other.
How to Analyse Like a House on Fire in 3 Steps
Step 1: Choose your example
The best way to choose an example is to choose a technique.
Remember you must include stylistic devices (how images and words are arranged in a text in order to produce meaning), and aesthetic features (elements that prompt a critical response from the reader) in your essays to gain the most marks.
In this case we will use the quote:
“I saw… an errant bit of cypress bow just at head height, offending my perfectionist streak.”
Step 2: Identify your technique(s)
‘Like a House on Fire’ centres an awful lot on the dynamic between Claire and the narrator, one representing chaos, and another representing order — hence why characterisation here is extremely important, as well as foils, to explore the themes.
The above quote is a personification of a cypress branch ‘offending’ the perfectionism of the arrangement. This is revealing of the narrator, as it highlights his mania for order.
Coupling this with Claire’s chaotic nature, we uncover the dynamic of the relationship.
Step 3: Write the analysis
Always be ready to ask yourself what the author intended you to feel/respond emotionally by reading the example quote.
This will make sure that you tackle an important part of the analysis for Like a House on Fire, which is the effect on the reader.
Kennedy employs the use of personification to define the orderly and perfectionist nature of the narrator, and contrast it with the chaotic predisposition of his wife. The narrator laments the irregularity of “an errant bit of cypress bow just at head height, offending my perfectionist streak.” Audiences are encouraged to recognise themselves in such a struggle, and in the final resolution of it by the end of the story.
Step 4: Practise with sample essay questions
Even if you’ve written an incredible essay, if you don’t respond to the question or stimulus that you’re given in an exam, you could miss out on a Band 6.
Luckily for you, we’ve got plenty of practise questions on our resources page for you to use!
Here are Practise Questions for the Year 11 Common Module to get you started!
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Vittorio Manessi is an Art of Smart tutor based in Queensland studying environmental science. He was one of the first Year 12 students to study under the new ATAR system in Queensland. He enjoys Maths, Science, English and Ancient History and is keen to share his knowledge of the QCE by making awesome resources.
