Young Men and Fire
by Norman Maclean
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Book Summary Information
Author: Norman MacleanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-11-15
ISBN: 0226500624
Number of pages: 301
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780226500621
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Young Men and Fire
Book Review: Reborn in the Sky
Summary: 5 Stars
What is a `blowup'? What is an `escape fire'? What is a smokejumper? I had no answers to any of these questions before I began the book Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean. This book explores the harsh reality of forest fires and the risks undertaken by the firefighters. The book focuses on the Mann Gulch fire that happened in August of 1949 in western Montana. The fire burned 13 smokejumpers to death. Smokejumpers are the `elite' forest service firefighters who are dropped onto fires by parachute. The first half of the book intertwines firefighting and smokejumping history with facts about the Mann Gulch tragedy. The second half of the book is Maclean's search for the truth of the events leading to up to the tragedy and also his search for his own identity. Maclean uses his personal experiences, metaphors, and religion to paint a handsome, yet tragic picture of the Mann Gulch Fire.Maclean opens the novel with a short chapter entitled `Black Ghost.' He gives the reader an insight into his own personal reasons for writing this book. He says, "I once had seen a ghost, and the ghost again possessed me" (p4). Maclean had fought forest fires at the innocent age of fifteen. When he first heard about the young smokejumpers burning to death he immediately became obsessed with the story. He had come close to perishing while fighting a fire in his youth and could relate to the men `dying at least three times' (p7) on that mountainside. What kept Maclean alive was the Black Ghost he had seen in his struggles with a fire, the same ghost that forces him to follow this tragedy. He writes, "fear being only partly something that makes us run away-at times, at least, it is something that makes us come back again and stare at what made us run away" (p10). Maclean's personal experiences bring the reader closer to the brutality of fire, but his use of metaphors provides the reader with a vivid feeling of the burning desire to survive.
The metaphors used in Young Men and Fire are almost as intense as the fire itself. Maclean writes, "The moment the jumper starts falling is umbilical" (p53). He relates the whole routine of `appearing on earth from the sky' (p52) to that of being reborn. The smokejumper leaves the plane in a tuck position like that of being in the womb. A rip chord attaches the jumper to the plane like an umbilical chord to his mother. The chord makes the chute of life open after 12 feet of falling just like the umbilical chord keeps the jumper alive during pregnancy. The relation of jumping to that of being born gives the reader the sense that smokejumpers are like themselves, born of the womb. This connection allows the reader to sympathize with the innocence of these young men about to jump and fall into a tragedy. The birth metaphor is only one of many metaphors the writer uses.
Maclean turns words into pictures in other places as well. While describing the rugged landscape the smokejumpers fought during their battle, Maclean refers to "the place [Mann Gulch] in the Gates where the struggle between mountains and plains came face to face" (p44). He says the cliffs in Mann Gulch are, "the rearings and collisions and roarings of the bottoms of oceans as they stood up like sea beasts struggling to prevent anything from finding a way around them" (p45). This ironic analogy set the stage for the beastly fire that consumed the innocent children who could not find a way around the troublesome cliffs. Maclean, through his words, allows the reader to visualize the scene and gives the reader a `seeing' perspective. He realizes, though, that a person may be blinded by smoke and cannot always see, so he also alludes to God in many instances to give the reader a spiritual perspective.
The prevalent theme of religion and God throughout the book Young Men and Fire lets the reader connect to the smokejumpers' inner struggles and beliefs. Maclean was raised and schooled by his father, a Presbyterian minister. Using his background, Maclean makes many references to God and the Bible. Early in the book, when he talks about Hellman, one of the men burned so badly that he died a day later, Maclean states, "At the end he wished he had been a better Catholic" (p29). I think Maclean overstates this point. He should not put words into Hellman's mouth. I do not know if Maclean is trying to put some humor in the passage, but playing with a person's death like that seems to go overboard. The reference to Hellman being Catholic is only one of many allusions to religion.
Maclean uses other religious references much better than the first. He writes about the landscape laden with crosses, "The Christian scene of suffering, where hill meets sky, has been painted so many thousands of times that something within it must direct it to paint itself" (p174). The setting, which he has seen personally, is almost surreal. It is like something that we might see in a sad movie, but it is real, more real than we want to believe. Maclean makes us believe with an allusion to Dante's Inferno. He writes, "Since the Inferno is also a pit, I have had to learn how to die in the Inferno always falling down" (p205). This way of dying, just like the smokejumpers died, takes away all hope and confidence. If they fall, there is nothing to save them since their only chance of survival was flight. Surviving is a tough thing to teach. Maclean cannot explain why only three people out of the 16 on the ground survived. The inexplicable nature of survival causes readers to be intrigued with those that survive. Why are they saved? Is it God? Luck? Endurance? Strength? The book causes the reader to have many questions.
Maclean's book Young Men and Fire is a must read. The book presents elements of personal experience, metaphor, and religion allowing the reader to connect with the inner thoughts of the dead. Maclean says, "True poems are hard to find" (p202). This story is a true poem and must be read by anyone looking for what saved Maclean and his identity.
Summary of Young Men and Fire
On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."?from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."?Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."?Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."?Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."?Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."?John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."?James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."?from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."?Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."?Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."?Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."?Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."?John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."?James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
On August 5, 1949, lightning came crashing down in the vast spruce forest above Seeley Lake, Montana, and touched off a roaring blaze. As every Westerner knows, lightning means fire, but the fire that raged through Mann Gulch that day was huge--the sort that occurs only every few decades. A battery of paratrooper-firefighters, many of them fresh veterans of World War II, had been anticipating it, and even looking forward to the chance to fight a great fire. Before the day ended thirteen of those smokejumpers lay dead, their charred remains evidence that something had gone terribly wrong. Norman Maclean gives a thorough account of the incident in language not meant for the squeamish: "Burning to death on a mountainside is dying at least three times ... first, considerably ahead of the fire, you reach the verge of death in your boots and your legs; next, as you fail, you sink back in the region of strange gases and red and blue darts where there is no oxygen and here you die in your lungs; then you sink in prayer into the main fire that consumes." After August 1949, he notes, the Forest Service came to recognize that not all fires need to be fought and that fire benefits most forest ecosystems.
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