Morning in the Burned House

The scientific nature of the complexity of grief helps the reader navigate some of the circumstances and imagery within “Morning in the Burned House.” Loss is experienced by human beings in different ways. While some are able to go about their lives normally after a loved one’s death, others experience what is known as complex grief. Complex grief, as Dominick Flarey explains, is experienced emotionally and physically (Flarey, Dominck. “Memory and Grief.” American Institute of Health Care Professionals, 20 July 2023). 

Due to the human physical responses (changes in hormones and blood pressure) that grief causes, it’s easy for those grieving to become overstimulated or oversensitive. This can create a heightened awareness that can make objects seem more vivid and may explain the presence of confusion between absence and corporeality in the speaker’s observation. As Flarey notes, in some intense cases of complex grief, memory can become a “haunting event that is triggered via sound, scent and place and can manifest in flashbacks or nightmares and night terrors.” 

In other cases, the memory becomes a fixed experience due to the emotional connection that the grieving have with it. In this way, the memory acts as an emotional tribute by which the person memorializes the event by recalling “detailed accounts of […] the event itself, but also [the] side details of what one felt at the moment, the surrounding environment and people present” (Flarey), a fact clearly evidenced by Atwood’s speaker’s notations of who is and is not in the house, what is outside, and how they feel while wondering if it is a “trap or blessing” (Line 23). In dreams, those who grieve often find a way to relive the event, “albeit in symbolic form” (Flarey), which is also the language of poems. Whether the poem is a tribute to Atwood’s own emotions or to the larger audience, who “understand[s]” (Line 2) these emotions, “Morning in the Burned House” benefits from acknowledging its rendering of complex grief.