Kelsi Curtin

English 3223

Professor Kates

28 October 2015

Fire in Beulah Essay

In Rilla Askew’s novel Fire in Beulah, there is a common theme of birth

throughout the entire novel. Birth in this novel holds so much symbolism for

the characters and provides a theme that ultimately ties all the different

characters together. Askew uses birth as a theme at both the macro-level

and the micro-level. At the micro-level, the births represent new life coming

into a world that is so messed up and not in the greatest place. At the macro-

level these births represent more than just new life; they represent change

as well. At both levels the births add an element of change, however at the

macro-level, the change is more metaphorical. The use of birth is also used

as a theme to show the birth of sudden change in the race divide in Tulsa.

The events in this book, though they are fictional, show the build up of

tensions between the races and this tension leads ultimately to the Tulsa

race riots that were birthed from all the tension. The novel leads up to the

riot and shows how lives were changed after this terrible event, just like lives

were changed after all the actual births of children in the novel. One thing

that is so present in this novel is change. There is always something that is

changing, whether that is someone’s ides, someone’s life, or the way that a

town looks at race. Births are used in Fire and Beulah to show these

Curtin 1

changes, and without reading closely, the overall metaphor can be easily

missed.

The first birth in the novel is the birth of Japheth. Japheth’s birth kind of

sets a tone for novel that is unexpected. An event that should be joyous and

exciting quickly turns gruesome and disturbing. The way that Askew

describes this birth within the first few pages of the book is incredible. Iola

Bloodgood describes the birth in such detail that you can almost imagine

that you are there. Iola says:

Lord, that room stink. Any birthroom do, but this one was different and

worse, and I lay that onto that stopped up plumbing and so much

blood. There’s been just a few times when I seen so much blood. All

births is bloody, make no mistake, they completely violent events, and

I done see and smelt plenty, cut more than a few babies out their

mama’s bellies, and that sure do make some blood, but this one was

different, I believe because that woman bleeding way up high

somewhere (Askew 12).

This description of birth paints a picture of a bloody scene that does not

sound exciting or happy at all. This birth has a bad start to it from the

beginning and it sets a tone for Japheth’s character, even before he is born.

This scene sets the tone of something about Japheth just being a little off and

not like everyone else, his birth was worse than any other that Iola had seen

already making him different. This birth changed the lives of not only Rachel

(his mother), and Iola’s, but it changed Althea’s life as well. After giving birth

Curtin 2

to a baby that Rachel calls a “monster,” Althea hears Rachel tell Iola to

“Take it out to the ravine and smash its head in” (Askew 19). This changes

the way that Althea looks at life all together. This is a time when a family

should be happy and a time when they should be celebrating the birth of a

new baby, yet her mother does not want the baby and wants someone to kill

the baby that she refers to as a monster. This would change anyone’s life

and this may be one of the biggest reasons that Althea wanted to leave her

home and create a new life for herself that had nothing to do with her family.

She wanted to change everything about her life and she did so and was able

to lie to everyone in her new life about what had happened in her old life.

This birth changed so much about Althea and how she looked at life.

Metaphorically, Japheth’s birth represents how life can change in an instant.

One minute Rachel is excited to have her baby and the next (after what

seemed to be an awful birth) wanting to have someone kill her baby. This

theme is carried throughout the novel and is shown in the births that come

later on in the novel as well.

The next significant birth in the novel is that of Graceful’s child.

Graceful’s child is the product of being raped by Japheth, which adds to the

long list of ways that Graceful and Althea are connected. This birth changes

everyone. This birth is hard for Graceful to accept because she does not

want to have a child that is not her husbands, nor does she want to have

child who is going to be half black and half white. She is also still scarred

from being raped by Japheth and this child being a product of that is still

Curtin 3

hard for her to accept. After Althea asks Graceful if she has made

arrangements for the baby the narrator says “Graceful had never reckoned

the exact time, because reckoning would force her back to the night of the

seed’s planting. She refused it” (Askew 299). Graceful’s life will forever be

changed because of the night that Japheth raped her and this birth of a child

will keep her in constant reminder of a night that she wishes she could

forget. This child changes Althea’s life as well, much later in the novel after

the race riot has already occurred. Graceful’s child, who is Althea’s nephew,

makes Althea begin thinking about her family who she had not spoken with

in years. She begins to think about how easy it would be for her to find them

and she wonders if she has other nieces and nephews. After Graceful leaves

her house at the end of the novel Althea thinks to herself “Come to think of

it, there must be others. She surely had no other nephews, and nieces. It

wouldn’t be too hard to find them. They were all living in Bristow. She

wouldn’t know her sisters’ last names, of course, but Bristow was not a large

town” (Askew 376). The birth of Graceful’s child changes Althea in way that

she never could have imagined. She left her entire family to make a new life

for herself and only after she accepts that Graceful’s baby is her family does

she change her thinking about what her family is doing and what they are

doing with their lives. At the metaphorical level, this birth again represents a

change in the fact that life sometimes throws curveballs at you and you have

to take them as they come. This change in thinking and the change in her

feelings toward her family could have only come with the birth of Graceful’s

Curtin 4

baby. The baby birthed a change in Althea that more than likely would have

never happened. This birth shows that sometimes, beauty can come from

horrible situations and change lives for the better.

There are births that happen in this novel that may not be the actual

birth of a human, but the birth of a new person or the birth of someone

thinking completely differently. These births change people and these births

change the way that these characters look at life. Births can be a happy time

or births can bring with them times of pain, but in either situation, every

person involved will be changed in one way or another. I think that the entire

novel is almost the “pregnant” period of the story that leads up to the Tulsa

race riot. The book has so many elements to it and each section of the book

adds another layer to end up birthing this huge event that changed people’s

lives forever. The race riot was something that had many factors that lead up

to it. This may not be an actual birth, but this is just another way that Askew

is able to use this theme of birth in the novel to ultimately birth the story of

the Tulsa race riot. She uses actual births of humans at the micro-level to

show change, but at the macro-level she uses birth to show that through this

event was change. The race riots may have been an event that was

understated by many people but for the people of Tulsa, it changed how life

was going to be forever.

Overall the theme of birth in the novel is used to show change at both

a macro-level and a micro-level. The births of Japheth and of Graceful’s baby

show that a birth can change people’s lives. The birth of the Tulsa race riot

Curtin 5

shows that overtime, a horrible event was birthed and that event changed

people’s loves forever. Askew does an incredible job at being able to use

births to show change in many different forms throughout this novel. This

theme of births is something that can be looked at from both a surface level,

and even at a much deeper one.

Curtin 6