Lu Xun Dead Fire Summary

Lu Xun’s 1925 poem, “Dead fire” narrates a traveler’s adventure who fell into a valley of ice where he suddenly awaken a dead fire with whom he engages in an interesting conversation. Through the dialogue we can infer that the two implicitly discuss life fundamental questions that create hesitation and indecision. After interpreting my own perception of a life of fire as opposed to a world of ice, I will then try to explain the existential dilemma between the two views. I believe that most of us are born with an inner fire, with this desire to grow, to expand, to learn, to explore, and then I assume some sort of disappointment happens and the fire stops. The seeds of my statement are rooted from the quote:” As a child, I always

To be on fire is to decide to live an extraordinary life. I believe the word extraordinary is subjective in the sense that there is no right or wrong; as a matter of fact I would say that what is right is to know what’s right for your soul and to live that. For instance, the way I define my own extraordinary life is different from Lu Xun’s extraordinary life. To live an extraordinary life is to define and live a life on your own terms. From a spiritual angle, I like to connect the image of a burning fire to what Gary Zukav, author of “the seat of the soul”, call authentic empowerment which is when personality comes to serve the purpose of the soul; the way I see it is that when personality align with the soul, we do what gives us meaning because we believe that it is our life purpose. When decide to awaken our inner fire when we become increasingly aware of both a sense that life has a meaning and our burning purpose here on earth. To put it differently, this is when we allow the soul to be the guide

On the one hand, by letting the fire burn out, the narrator would settle for a life of inaction which ultimately leads to death of soul; as Lu Xun put it so well “not acting in the world is like committing suicide”. Moreover, I do believe in a strong correlation between inner growth and fulfillment; as I mentioned earlier, when we stop growing, we start dying inside. In other words, when we stop growing, we stop filling our soul. On the other hand, let’s keep in mind that it is the protagonist who awaken the fire that later on asks him “what will you do yourself”, which implies that not only are humans the one who decide to light the inner flame, but we are also the one who choose what to do with it. Based on the fearful reaction of the fire when it was asked to leave the valley of ice, we can induce that lightening a dead fire does not come without danger which encourages the idea that being on fire could also mean living a life of unwholesome actions which would result in suffering in Buddhist doctrines (Casanowicks, 738); If the action of awakening a dead fire is fueled by a negative intention , then this unwholesome action would result in suffering consequences such as death. In other words, not only are actions intentions fueled, but they also have consequences. Awakening a dead fire