Previous
Coal
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Flames, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Grief and Human Connection
Nature vs. Human Effort
Sexism
Love and Respect
Summary
Analysis
Back in the stone hut, Charlotte doesn’t trust the detective. There’s something in the detective’s body language that suggests to Charlotte that she’s pretending to be tougher than she really is. Charlotte can tell she’s lonely. But, because Nicola trusts the detective, Charlotte agrees to let her tell her their story. Nicola doesn’t tell the detective that she and Charlotte have a sexual relationship, or that the flames came from Charlotte’s body. She says that they came to the hut because they wanted to be away from other people after the fire; they didn’t know who they could trust.
Charlotte mistrusts the detective because she can tell that the detective is pretending—something she can recognize because it’s how Levi behaves, too. Still, Charlotte values her relationship with Nicola more highly than her own judgment or comfort, which is why she lets the detective question them. Nicola doesn’t share any details of her and Charlotte’s relationship with the detective, which suggests she feels protective of their bond and doesn’t want any outside influence to threaten it.
Themes
The detective congratulates Charlotte and Nicola on their decision to come here. She begins to tell them about her own journey here, but Charlotte tunes her out; she’s busy thinking about how to tell Nicola they can’t be together anymore. She knows it’ll hurt Nicola badly, but she doesn’t want her flames to endanger her. She starts listening to the detective’s voice again. The detective says Charlotte and Nicola should head to Beauty Point. Nicola says her parents live at Hawley, so that seems like the place to go, but the detective says they should go to see Charlotte’s brother (Levi), as he’s the one who hired her.
Charlotte feels she has to weigh Nicola’s physical safety against her romantic love for her. She isn’t yet prepared to accept that their relationship is built on mutual commitment—that Nicola’s desire to help and protect her is as strong as her own desire to protect Nicola. And she still hasn’t figured out how to reign in her flames, so she considers herself a danger to those around her—a sign that her grief, which leaks out in those flames, still feels turbulent and uncontrollable to her.
Themes
Though Charlotte and Levi don’t understand each other, Charlotte knows they love each other deeply. When she ran away after finding Levi’s notes about the coffin, it was out of love for him. She couldn’t deal with the amount of death in her life, and this wasn’t something she could explain to Levi without becoming too emotional. She didn’t want to break the bond between them. She planned to return after she had calmed down. What’s more, she’d wanted to leave earlier, because since Levi and Charlotte’s mother died, she’d begun to feel flames crackling within her body.
Charlotte sees her relationship with Levi as operating on many levels. Though they haven’t found out how to use language to relate to each other, they have a primal love for each other, which they both try to nurture and protect in their own ways. This moment confirms that Charlotte wasn’t only escaping Levi and the coffin, but also her own uncontrollable emotions.
Themes
Nicola and Charlotte drive north, following the detective’s car. The trees around them get taller and denser, and Charlotte feels hemmed in. Nicola puts her hand on Charlotte’s knee, and Charlotte dreads the moment when she has to tell her to leave. As the landscape becomes sparser, Charlotte relaxes. She thinks about what awaits her at home. Perhaps Levi’s worry at her disappearance caused him to abandon his coffin plan, or perhaps the coffin is finished and waiting in the living room. Either way, she knows that he'll lecture her in a condescending way when she arrives.
Nicola seems to understand Charlotte deeply and innately, which she expresses through a gesture of physical care at the precise moment Charlotte needs it. Charlotte’s emotional wellbeing affects her perception of the natural landscape she’s in—when she feels at peace with nature, she can appreciate its beauty, but it can easily overwhelm her. Meanwhile, even as she travels back to her brother, she prepares to defend herself against him, which suggests that misunderstanding has eroded their relationship over time.
Themes
Get the entire Flames LitChart as a printable PDF.
Charlotte knows that if she leaves Nicola, she’ll have to control the flames on her own. She pictures herself standing in the kitchen with Levi, talking calmly with no flames in sight. As they drive on, she realizes this image of her family is missing Levi and Charlotte’s father, whose house they can see from the road. She doesn’t want to let their father into the picture, and she knows Levi would feel the same: they have no desire to welcome a father who left them and didn’t even come to Levi and Charlotte’s mother’s funeral.
Charlotte has become so used to her father’s absence that she instinctively leave him out of the picture when she visualizes her family. At the same time, though, this suggests that her father’s absence somehow strengthens her bond with Levi—their shared conviction that they’d prefer to live without their father is something that connects them.
Themes
Charlotte and Nicola arrive at the farm in the afternoon. Nicola tells Charlotte her home is beautiful, though Charlotte knows Nicola’s home must look quite similar. Levi’s car isn’t there; he isn’t home. The detective asks if there’s anyone he might be visiting. Charlotte says no. She finds the spare key, and the three of them go inside. Charlotte feels an overwhelming rush of emotion, and Nicola touches her on the back. The detective pokes around the house and finds a bottle of sherry. Charlotte tells her she can have it, but that she should leave. The detective replies that she’s not leaving until she gets paid, so they need to find Levi.
Once again, Nicola demonstrates her desire to make others feel comfortable, this time by sharing a compliment that others might not have bothered to express. Even when Charlotte isn’t leaking flames, Nicola knows when her emotions are overwhelming her, and she’s always ready to show her support. In this moment, the detective shows she doesn’t care much about Charlotte’s comfort—her task is over, and now she just wants payment.
Themes
Charlotte becomes angry. She can’t stand the detective’s smugness and feels the urge to burn her. Nicola studies the fridge and the trash for clues on Levi’s whereabouts. Soon, she calls out from the hall table. She’s found a map and a notepad that holds the grooves of a previous page on which Levi seems to have written some directions. When Charlotte looks at the map, she realizes one part of it has been marked with tiny notes: Notley Fern Gorge.
Charlotte has grown used to her flame-producing abilities and now considers using them for specific purposes, like burning the detective. This suggests that she’s getting better at controlling her emotions, which the flames symbolize.
Themes
Charlotte doesn’t like the gorge, though she never told Levi and Charlotte’s mother that. She feels claustrophobic there—she’d rather be by the violent ocean. She hated it even when she went there to spread her mother’s ashes, and she knew that when her mother came back, bearing physical similarities to the gorge, she’d only remind Charlotte of their differences. The gorge now holds Charlotte’s last memory of her mother.
Charlotte’s connection to nature dramatically contrasts with her mother’s: while Edith wanted an enclosed part of nature to comfort and nurture her, Charlotte finds her own kind of comfort in nature’s most exposed, violent locales. This reaffirms the idea that a deep connection to nature is also one that’s uniquely suited to each person’s attitude and psychology.
Themes
Nicola and Charlotte drive to the gorge separately from the detective. Nicola asks Charlotte why Levi would go to the gorge. Charlotte is too anxious to give a proper answer. She decides not to tell Nicola to leave today—she’ll do it, but not on the same day that she visits the gorge. This decision brings a wave of relief. Less than an hour later, they arrive at the gorge as the sun sets. Levi’s car is parked there. Charlotte, Nicola, and the detective trudge down the wooden steps into the thick vegetation. Soon, they begin to hear a monotonous knocking sound, and as they walk further, they realize it’s the sound of Levi swinging an axe into a tree fern.
While Nicola and Charlotte head to the gorge to find and help Levi, the detective goes along in search of payment. But though they have different purposes, they’re still driving to the same place—in this way, the natural environment to which they are headed overpowers the minor differences in their reasons for going there. Levi’s monotonous knocking is ominous and suggests that he’s being compelled into repetitive action and is longer in control of his actions.
Themes
It’s freezing, but Levi has taken off his shirt and put it on a nearby sawhorse along with something furry. He’s emaciated, and his hair is greasy and knotted. Charlotte’s anger turns to concern. Levi doesn’t see her until she says his name, at which he turns to her but doesn’t recognize her. After a while, he starts to repeat her name. He smiles manically and tells her he’s been “a bit preoccupied.” Charlotte introduces Nicola and the detective. Levi says he never hired the detective. He grabs the pelt from the sawhorse and clutches it.
Levi’s shirtless, gaunt appearance shows that he’s completely out of touch with the weather and his own needs—he’s completely focused on finishing the coffin for Charlotte that he’s even forgotten how to speak to other people. On top of this, he’s lost all memory of the detective. And he’s threatened by the fact that his everyday life has caught up to him. The only things that matter to him are the pelt and the coffin, but Charlotte and the others are unlikely to understand that.
Themes
Charlotte asks Levi what he’s doing. When he tells her he’s making her a coffin, she says she doesn’t need or want one. Levi says she will one day, but Charlotte disagrees. When Charlotte suggests they go home, Levi becomes frantic. He insists that Charlotte just hasn’t considered that a coffin would be helpful—it would mean she wouldn’t come back after dying. Charlotte feels like Levi is trying to kindle her flames. Levi explains that he's doing this to help Charlotte, and that because Levi and Charlotte’s mother loved this place, it seemed right to build the coffin here. Charlotte insists they leave. She grips his arm, feeling an urge to help the only family she still has.
Levi is unable to accept that Charlotte knows what’s best for herself. He’s become so absorbed in his task that he can’t imagine it having been the wrong thing to do. When language fails between them, Charlotte resorts to physical gestures to show that she really cares about Levi. Even though they love each other, their expressions of love are threatening their relationship because neither one can express themselves in a way the other understands.
Themes
Levi stumbles. Charlotte ends up grabbing the pelt from him instead of grabbing his arm, and she feels its glowing warmth. The two siblings fight over the pelt. Nicola leaps to grab the axe in Levi’s other hand. Levi swings the axe and throws Nicola backward; her head cracks against the sawhorse, and her eyes roll back. Charlotte can no longer contain her anger. She rips the pelt from Levi’s hands and releases her flames into its fur. More flames pour from everywhere on her body, releasing wild heat. She can barely hear Levi’s screams. The pelt burns with a purple fire that’s more energetic than it should be, then it dissolves into ash.
Charlotte finds the pelt just as enticing as Levi does, which emphasizes its magical quality—the tempting warmth it emanates is actual and material, not merely a product of Levi’s desperate focus. The vibrant purple flame the pelt lets off when it catches fire echoes this magic quality. This is a scene of complete chaos, but that chaos releases the tension between Charlotte and Levi, which hints that nature’s overwhelming power might heal at least a small part of their relationship.
Themes
Levi kneels over the pile of ash that was once the pelt. Charlotte stands above him, still leaking fire. She sees Nicola lying unmoving by the sawhorse. She moves toward her but realizes she can’t control the spreading fire: flames are licking at Levi’s body and spreading through the gorge. The detective helps Nicola up while Levi races to his fern logs. Out of nowhere, Nicola smashes into Charlotte and pins her down. Charlotte struggles, knowing Nicola is in agony, but Nicola clings on until Charlotte’s flames die out. When Charlotte gets up, she sees the detective dragging Nicola into the stream to submerge her burned skin.
Charlotte observes the destruction around her. She was the one who burned the pelt and set fire to the gorge, and it’s because of her fire that she can’t reach Nicola to help her. Though she, Nicola, and the detective came to the gorge to help Levi, it’s here that Charlotte’s own emotions play out, outside of her control—and the resulting danger and destruction suggest that she isn’t as in tune with her grief as she thought she was.
Themes
A small distance away, Levi curls up in terror as the fire surrounds him. Charlotte struggles to reach him, but she soon realizes that neither of them will leave the gorge. The detective keeps pouring water over Nicola. Charlotte lies down on the hot ground, thinking only about how much she wants Nicola to survive; she wishes she’d told her to leave her when they were at the farm. She wishes in vain for the flames to recede.
Where just before, Levi was stubbornly taking charge of the situation and reassuring Charlotte he knew what she needed, now he’s curled up, completely vulnerable and afraid. This moment of unchecked natural devastation reduces Levi to his most basic instincts, and he’s longer able to pretend he’s in control.
Themes
A man emerges from the flames. Only Charlotte sees him. From his smile, she instantly recognizes him as Levi and Charlotte’s father. She must be hallucinating, dreaming, or dead. Her father mouths something to her, looks up at the sky, and sighs. Then rain starts to fall, slowly at first but amassing to a huge downpour. Charlotte’s father disappears as the rain starts to submerge the surroundings.
Charlotte’s assumption that the vision of her father is some kind of hallucination rather than reality implies that she doesn’t know his true identity as a fire spirit. Still, even if she doesn’t understand why, her ability to produce flames connects her to him, which allows them to share this mysterious, private moment.
Themes
