Melton, a Gettysburg College Assistant Professor of English and former Hampshire College faculty member. By referencing fire, Baldwin makes clear that the kind of vengeance black people would pursue would be both passionate, intense, and destructive."The contemporary moment is rooted in our collective history, and understanding that allows us to understand our present," says McKinley E. Here, the image of fire is contrasted with water, which serves as a more soothing and gentle alternative. He makes use of a quote from a song inspired by the Bible, "No more water, but the fire next time!" to express that if his path of lovingly guiding white people to recognize their complicity in atrocities is not followed, then the only available option is "fire," or vengeance and violence. At the end of the text, fire comes back as an important metaphor for vengeance. For him, sexual experiments at this young age felt like they were "as hot as the fires of Hell." This image helps Baldwin to communicate just how intense and potentially harmful this period in his life was. He first uses fire as a metaphor when describing his sexual awakening.
The image of fire helps Baldwin to illustrate key moments in his text. The image of the "wall" recurs when he discusses the ways in which he and his peers felt trapped in and limited by the expectations and prejudices of the white world around them. Instead, Baldwin is left only with the path to the church.
Most poignantly, he discusses the ways in which his own fears divided him from many potential paths by drawing on the image of a wall that rises "between the world and me." This image helps readers to understand just how intractable Baldwin's fears could be when he was an adolescent they felt so solid and real to him that he compares them to a wall, preventing him from taking a number of paths.
Baldwin refers to walls when discussing the limitations faced by black boys in America.
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