Literary notes about embers (AI summary)
In literature, “embers” are often employed both as tangible remnants of a dying fire and as potent symbols of lingering hope, passion, or a fading past. Authors use the image of glowing embers to suggest that even when the primary flame has faded, the possibility of rekindling remains—whether igniting a revived spirit or a forgotten ideal, as seen in the stirring of freedom’s embers to awaken manhood ([1], [2]) or in the physical act of fanning a fire to ward off despair ([3], [4]). This dual nature, representing both warmth and the precarious state of dying vitality, appears across genres: from the practical, where embers are used for cooking or comforting the weary ([5], [6]), to the metaphorical, where they encapsulate the transient yet enduring nature of hope and legacy in human affairs ([7], [8]).
- It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.
— from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass - It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass - Sudden I stir the embers, and inspire With animating breath the seeds of fire:
— from The Odyssey by Homer - On the hearth the red embers of his fire were fading away in the bright beams of the morning sun, that looked aslant through the open window.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - One of the men was heating something in a tin cup over the embers.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin - " She knelt on the hearth-rug, stretching her hands to the embers.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - In that assembly, the dying embers of freedom were, for a moment, revived and inflamed by the breath of fanaticism.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - But the tables were subtly turned: my new teacher, far from offering intellectual aridities, fanned the embers of my God-aspiration.
— from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
