Panoramic and Dioramic Drama

The fire fiction likewise conveys both positive and negative messages. The main story line of Barriers Burned Away is a conventional love plot saturated in Christian piety and democratic ideals. It would appear that protagonist Dennis Fleet's hopes to win the affections of Christine Ludolph, the daughter of a wealthy expatriate German baron and art dealer, are doomed. What stands between them are Christine's aristocratic arrogance and her cold-hearted atheism. In the crucible of the fire, however, she loses her father, her fortune, and, most important, her false beliefs. Joyfully declaring, "Every barrier is burned away," she embraces Christ, America, and Dennis. But in the course of her swain's rescuing Christine from the physical dangers of the fire, he has to protect her at the point of a gun from the social scum that, like the savage dogs in Fredericks' drawing, menaces the respectable refugees huddled along the lakefront. For all their lofty symbolism, elevated language, and complexity of plot, these works are in some ways simpler versions of the eyewitness accounts and the media reports on the fire. Their authors seem even more determined to derive a few clear meanings from this complex event, always with an emphasis on traditional values and social stability. But to demonstrate the power of the forces of faith and good, and to be sure of their own imaginative appeal to the popular imagination, the art and literature of the fire had to demonstrate how dire was this visitation that consumed Chicago. In so doing their authors sometimes revealed more than they may have intended deeply felt concerns about the forces of destruction and disorder of which the fire was a more awesome symbol than any they could fashion.

"Relief for the Sufferers" by Jules Saintin

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