Fear
One of the poem's central themes is fear. From the first line, the speaker situates the events of the poem as a kind of ghost story, the sort of narrative that is retold each year at family gatherings. Rather than giving a straightforward depiction of that evening, the speaker offers only glimpses of the cross burning and the men dressed in white gowns, making it more unsettling in its lack of clarity. The reason for this eerie atmosphere in the poem is to underscore the role of terror in this scene. These men chose to appear in the dead of night and vanish in order to strike fear into these communities. By taking on the appearance of the supernatural, they seek to create a more terrifying spectacle. The speaker demonstrates the lingering impact of this frightening occurrence in the way that they retell it and seem to try and suppress it. Fear impacts both how the poem is written and how the speaker characterizes what they have witnessed.
Storytelling
Storytelling is another major thematic thread in the poem. In the first stanza, the speaker sets up the frame of the story, saying that this is a story that is told each year. In addition, they only utilize the plural pronoun "we," strongly implying that this is a story remembered and told communally. Storytelling takes on an important role in the poem as it shows how these moments of fear and terror are passed down and retold by communities. It also reveals the way that these stories are reshaped in their telling, sometimes seeking to deny or suppress the most troubling aspects of a memory. The poem displays a continual tension in which the speaker tries to minimize the disturbing sight of the cross burning, but also cannot stop themselves from describing it in haunting detail. This internal conflict within the speaker's voice, reveals how they cannot forget this moment or fully control their retelling of it.
Repression
Another of the poem's main themes is repression. While the poem is very obviously about the trauma the speaker experienced, their commentary continually downplays the terror of what they saw. The poem describes the burning of a cross by members of the Ku Klux Klan. However, it uses language that seems to minimize the actual impact of the event itself. The speaker describes the men as "white as angels in their gowns" and notes that in the morning they felt that "nothing really happened." This is not how the narrator actually feels, as evidenced by the fear in the tone of the story, but seems to represent their efforts to dismiss this scene as unreal, like a bad dream. This subtle use of language in the poem indicates how these victims of a hateful act seek to repress the trauma of this moment.
