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From The Ashes Annotated

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Poetry is a language of creation and can be a powerful literary form of self-expression. Jesse Thistle, the author of From the Ashes, includes poetry throughout his memoir to share his emotional and inspiring story of overcoming addiction and homelessness. He has now become an author and a rising Indigenous scholar. Thistle begins the memoir with the poem "A Little Boy's Dream," introducing the theme of suicide and displaying Thistle's struggles with his family. Throughout the memoir, the readers witness how abandonment affects Thistle and leads to his constant battles with addiction and homelessness. Towards the end of the memoir, Thistle includes the poem "Fighting the Darkness," where he acknowledges that he was once 'from the ashes' but …show more content…

The poem "Fighting the Darkness" displays the theme of Thistle finding his identity. The poem also includes the rhetorical device of parallelism and the literary device of personification to create pathos and connect with the readers. In the poem, Thistle recalls his past and describes how different he used to be, "once, in a not-too-distant life/i was a different person" (Thistle 293). Self-reflection is essential for self-awareness as it helps an individual become more aware of their values and views of the world that influence their actions, which is necessary for changing one's behaviour. Not long ago, Thistle had been homeless and drunk on the streets, but he has recovered from his experiences, and so much has changed that he feels it was a different life altogether. Thistle uses parallelism in the poem, "live for today,/forget the past,/damn the future" (Thistle 293). Thistle places more than two parts of a compound idea in similar grammatical form, creating rhythm and emphasis. Thistle explains the darkness he used to live in, part of which was by the 'criminal's creed'. Thistle then uses personification, "that is how i can fight the darkness now./because i once was the darkness" (Thistle 294). Thistle gives personality and life to the idea of darkness. He describes that he can fight the darkness because he was once in the darkest place of his life and was 'from the ashes.' Earlier in the text, Thistle describes darkness, "That's all any of the darkness really is-just love gone bad. We're just broken-hearted people hurt by life" (Thistle 260). Thistle is on his journey of reconciliation but reflects on his past and acknowledges that he once felt as if he had nothing left to live for, but he is overcoming his past by employing lessons he learned. The poem is placed in the reconciliation segment of the memoir as the poem exemplifies how Thistle is fighting his battles to find his identity and

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