Forgotten Fire Analysis

Akane Morrison
Ms. Muscat
ENG 2D1-01
8 November, 2011
What Is it like to be Left in the Lurch? A boy named Vahan Kenderian was a distinguished individual with moral strengths and high spirits. These qualities helped him endure, when he knew that each day could have been his last when living through the Armenian Genocide. In the beginning of the novel “Forgotten Fire”, Vahan is described as the youngest child of a wealthy, Armenian family. He was very careless and would always need guidance from his family who was afraid of Vahan’s lack of character and discipline. When the Armenian Genocide began, Vahan’s personality slowly started to change as he realized how much he had lost, in terms of love and security. Throughout the novel, Vahan
“I knew that I was free and that I would never be free” (p.270). Vahan felt free escaping Bitlis to avoid from being harmed or killed by the Turks but felt guilty of being the only one in his family to survive. He knew that the flashbacks of his familiy’s deaths would always remain in his thoughts for the rest of his life. In Constantantinople, Vahan decides to go back to school once he had a place to stay. “I had lost 3 years of schooling, and I was determined to learn as much as I could” (p.268). Vahan realized that if he had no schooling, he wouldn’t be able to have a future leading him to success to fulfill his life with happiness. Vahan illustrates determination and dedication towards a successful existence and to refrain from the past of
“These were their graves, and I spoke to them soundlessly, from the deepest part of myself.”(p.271). Vahan felt it was mandatory to pay his respects by visiting their graves every week, since their inspiration helped him fight the hardships he had to face when he was struggling to find shelter, food and meeting different people that he didn’t feel like trusting. After all the tragic events that happened to him, he learns something about life that he never would have thought of, if the Armenian Genocide never happened. “I know, as my neighbours in Bitlis tried to tell me, that there is pain disillusion in the heart of it. I know, as my father knew, that character and discipline are the steel that fortify it, and that somewhere, beyond pain and disillusion, great blessing are made” (Bagdasarian,p.271).
Vahan has now become a character that builds strength to face the hardships when he knows that every day would lead him to prison or to his death. Without the Armenian Genocide, Vahan might have not matured other than by being a spoiled and absent-minded