Little Fires Everywhere

by

Celeste Ng

Mia Warren Character Analysis

Mia Warren, inspired in part by The Scarlet Letter’s Hester Prynne, is a single mother and struggling artist who finds herself at the center of a strange and tight-knit community, the manicured and utopic Shaker Heights, Ohio. She then rapidly becomes entwined in several of the town’s interlocking scandals and snafus. Empathetic, intuitive, and secretive, Mia avoids her shadowed past by focusing intensely on her art—manually manipulated photographs and portraits—and dodging the questions about heritage asked of her by her daughter Pearl and her landlady and eventual employer, Mrs. Richardson. Mia’s sense of duty to others and desire to guide, soothe, and assist often gets her—or whoever she’s trying to help—into hot water. When Mia realizes that Bebe Chow, her coworker at a local Chinese restaurant, is the mother of a baby who’s about to be adopted by a prominent Shaker Heights family, the McCulloughs, Mia encourages Bebe to step up, leading to a long, difficult, and emotionally taxing legal battle. Mia takes Izzy Richardson under her wing as her photography assistant, and indirectly influences Izzy first to pull a large-scale school prank, and eventually to burn down her own family’s home. Mia embodies, at various turns, several of the novel’s themes: motherhood, disruption, identity, altruism and manipulation, and ostracism. Her painstakingly crafted photographs are symbolic of the valuable perspective of an outsider, and also of an outsider’s power to sow seeds of disruption—both positive and negative, helpful and destructive.

Mia Warren Quotes in Little Fires Everywhere

The Little Fires Everywhere quotes below are all either spoken by Mia Warren or refer to Mia Warren. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Order vs. Disruption Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Mom,” [Pearl] began, then found she could not repeat Lexie’s blunt words. Instead she asked the question that ran below all the other questions like a deep underground river. “Was I wanted?”
…Mia said nothing for such a long time that Pearl wasn’t sure if she’d heard. After a long pause, Mia turned around, and to Pearl’s amazement, her mother’s eyes were wet.
“Were you wanted?” Mia said. “Oh, yes. You were wanted. Very, very much.” She walked rapidly out of the room without looking at her daughter again.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren (speaker)
Page Number: 44-45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Listen to this dumbass question,” [Lexie] groaned, fishing the application from her bag. “Rewrite a famous story from a different perspective. For example, retell The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch.”
“How about a fairy tale,” Moody suggested. “‘Cinderella’ from the point of view of the stepsisters.”
“‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as told by the wolf,” Pearl suggested.
“Or ‘Rumplestiltskin,’” Lexie mused. “That miller’s daughter cheated him. He did all that spinning for her and she said she’d give him her baby and then she reneged. Maybe she’s the villain here. She shouldn’t have agreed to give up her baby in the first place, if she didn’t want to.”
“Well,” Mia put in suddenly. “Maybe she didn’t know what she was giving up. Maybe once she saw the baby she changed her mind. Don’t be too quick to judge.”

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren (speaker), Moody Richardson (speaker), Lexie Richardson (speaker), Bebe Chow, Linda and Mark McCullough
Page Number: 54-55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

[Mrs. Richardson] turned her attention to the largest print, which had been stuck up alone over the mantelpiece. It was a photograph of a woman, back to the camera, in mid-dance. The film caught her in blurred motion—arms everywhere, stretched high, to her sides, curved to her waist—a tangle of limbs that, Mrs. Richardson realized with a shock, made her resemble an enormous spider, surrounded by a haze of web. It perturbed and perplexed her, but she could not turn away.

Related Characters: Mrs. Richardson / Elena (speaker), Mia Warren
Related Symbols: Mia’s Photographs
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

Mia could see there was no point in protesting, that protesting, in fact, would only make things worse and lead to ill will. She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them. Then she imagined herself safely installed in the Richardsons’ kingdom, half obscured in the background, keeping watch over her daughter. Reasserting her presence in her daughter’s life.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren, Mrs. Richardson / Elena
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Well?” said Mia. “What are you going to do about it?”
It was not a question Izzy had been asked before. Until now her life had been one of mute, futile fury. What was she going to do about it? The very idea that she could do something stunned her.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Izzy Richardson (speaker), Mrs. Peters, Deja Johnson
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Mia thought suddenly of those moments at the restaurant, after the dinner rush had ended and things were quiet, when Bebe sometimes rested her elbows on the counter and drifted away. Mia understood exactly where she drifted to. To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren, Bebe Chow, Mirabelle McCullough / May Ling Chow
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

It was so easy, she thought with some disdain, to find out about people. It was all out there, everything about them. You just had to look. You could figure out anything about a person if you just tried hard enough.

Related Characters: Mrs. Richardson / Elena (speaker), Mia Warren
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

It had been a long time since her daughter had let her be so close. Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren
Page Number: 248
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’s going to survive, if that’s what you mean.” Mia stroked Izzy’s hair. It was like Pearl’s, like her own had been as a little girl: the more you tried to smooth it, the more she insisted on springing free. “She’s going to get through this because she has to.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But she will. Sometimes, just when you think everything’s gone, you find a way. Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too, you know. They start over. They find a way.”

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Izzy Richardson (speaker), Bebe Chow
Related Symbols: Fire
Page Number: 295
Explanation and Analysis:
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Mia Warren Quotes in Little Fires Everywhere

The Little Fires Everywhere quotes below are all either spoken by Mia Warren or refer to Mia Warren. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Order vs. Disruption Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Mom,” [Pearl] began, then found she could not repeat Lexie’s blunt words. Instead she asked the question that ran below all the other questions like a deep underground river. “Was I wanted?”
…Mia said nothing for such a long time that Pearl wasn’t sure if she’d heard. After a long pause, Mia turned around, and to Pearl’s amazement, her mother’s eyes were wet.
“Were you wanted?” Mia said. “Oh, yes. You were wanted. Very, very much.” She walked rapidly out of the room without looking at her daughter again.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren (speaker)
Page Number: 44-45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Listen to this dumbass question,” [Lexie] groaned, fishing the application from her bag. “Rewrite a famous story from a different perspective. For example, retell The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch.”
“How about a fairy tale,” Moody suggested. “‘Cinderella’ from the point of view of the stepsisters.”
“‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as told by the wolf,” Pearl suggested.
“Or ‘Rumplestiltskin,’” Lexie mused. “That miller’s daughter cheated him. He did all that spinning for her and she said she’d give him her baby and then she reneged. Maybe she’s the villain here. She shouldn’t have agreed to give up her baby in the first place, if she didn’t want to.”
“Well,” Mia put in suddenly. “Maybe she didn’t know what she was giving up. Maybe once she saw the baby she changed her mind. Don’t be too quick to judge.”

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren (speaker), Moody Richardson (speaker), Lexie Richardson (speaker), Bebe Chow, Linda and Mark McCullough
Page Number: 54-55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

[Mrs. Richardson] turned her attention to the largest print, which had been stuck up alone over the mantelpiece. It was a photograph of a woman, back to the camera, in mid-dance. The film caught her in blurred motion—arms everywhere, stretched high, to her sides, curved to her waist—a tangle of limbs that, Mrs. Richardson realized with a shock, made her resemble an enormous spider, surrounded by a haze of web. It perturbed and perplexed her, but she could not turn away.

Related Characters: Mrs. Richardson / Elena (speaker), Mia Warren
Related Symbols: Mia’s Photographs
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

Mia could see there was no point in protesting, that protesting, in fact, would only make things worse and lead to ill will. She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them. Then she imagined herself safely installed in the Richardsons’ kingdom, half obscured in the background, keeping watch over her daughter. Reasserting her presence in her daughter’s life.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren, Mrs. Richardson / Elena
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Well?” said Mia. “What are you going to do about it?”
It was not a question Izzy had been asked before. Until now her life had been one of mute, futile fury. What was she going to do about it? The very idea that she could do something stunned her.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Izzy Richardson (speaker), Mrs. Peters, Deja Johnson
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Mia thought suddenly of those moments at the restaurant, after the dinner rush had ended and things were quiet, when Bebe sometimes rested her elbows on the counter and drifted away. Mia understood exactly where she drifted to. To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren, Bebe Chow, Mirabelle McCullough / May Ling Chow
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

It was so easy, she thought with some disdain, to find out about people. It was all out there, everything about them. You just had to look. You could figure out anything about a person if you just tried hard enough.

Related Characters: Mrs. Richardson / Elena (speaker), Mia Warren
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

It had been a long time since her daughter had let her be so close. Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Pearl Warren
Page Number: 248
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’s going to survive, if that’s what you mean.” Mia stroked Izzy’s hair. It was like Pearl’s, like her own had been as a little girl: the more you tried to smooth it, the more she insisted on springing free. “She’s going to get through this because she has to.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But she will. Sometimes, just when you think everything’s gone, you find a way. Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too, you know. They start over. They find a way.”

Related Characters: Mia Warren (speaker), Izzy Richardson (speaker), Bebe Chow
Related Symbols: Fire
Page Number: 295
Explanation and Analysis: