Technique, Theme, and Autobiography: Analysis of "A City's Death by Fire" Anonymous 12th Grade

The poem “A City’s Death by Fire” by Derek Walcott is a semi-autobiographical poem, a recollection of the Great Fire of 1948 in Central Castries (the capital and largest city of St. Lucia). The Great Fire attacked three quarters of the town and left more than 2,000 people homeless. This cataclysmic event affected Walcott’s life, because he was born in Central Castries. Walcott first describes the situation of the city with helplessness and despair, but then realizes that one should not lose faith after the physical world has failed to survive. Through this poem, Walcott conveys his theme that faith should not be help in the man-made world, but rather be held in the immunity of nature through the use of figurative language, diction, and imagery, and juxtaposition.

Throughout the poem, Walcott utilizes figurative language in order to reflect the despair and demolition caused by the Great Fire of 1948. The speaker talks about the “faiths that were snapped like a wire” as he felt betrayed by the false immunity that he thought existed in the city buildings. This simile expresses that abrupt loss of hope that Walcott had felt from the fire. He also mentions the situation under which the poem was written “under a candles eye that...