51 pages • 1 hour read
Rodman PhilbrickWildfire
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Survival and Resilience Through Crisis
Wildfire is part of the well-established genre of the survival story within children’s literature. There are many texts that feature young people finding the courage and skills to survive life-threatening situations. Rodman Philbrick has also written other books in this genre, including Zane and the Hurricane. The theme of survival and resilience through crisis is at the heart of many such novels, showing readers that they too could have what it takes to make it through a very challenging situation, even if they are not adults.
There are several kinds of conflict that feature in survival stories. One type of conflict is “person versus nature,” where the major threat facing the protagonist comes from the natural world. Although the bikers are antagonists in Wildfire, it is the fire itself that poses the primary and immediate threat to Sam and Delphy’s survival (with the climate change that enabled the wildfire’s rapid spread lurking as a secondary, more general threat). The fire is too powerful for the characters to defeat, so they must survive by escaping it. Because their survival is built on their ability to put distance between themselves and the fire, the narrative maintains a high level of tension in each chapter.
The theme of survival and resilience through crisis is closely tied to Sam’s father, who is no longer alive but still has a big impact on Sam’s everyday life. Sam’s ability to survive comes from his father, who taught him many of the skills that help Sam and Delphy get out of the woods. When his resilience wavers, Sam also thinks about his father’s insistence that he “make a plan and stick to it” in the event of disaster (15). For Delphy, the motivation to survive comes from her own internal determination more than any outside source, though she also wants to return to her family.
Although Sam and Delphy are both competent and clever characters who make the best decisions they can to ensure their survival, Wildfire makes it clear that a big part of surviving a crisis is luck. At several points in the story, they escape death by the skin of their teeth. Sam barely outruns the fire as it overwhelms his summer camp and barely escapes the logging camp in the Jeep. When a heat storm strikes the deer stand that they are sheltering in, he drops the ladder just in time to avoid the lightning “[going] through [him] on the way to the ground” (117). When the logging road runs out, it is through sheer luck that Sam and Delphy find themselves so close to Phat Freddy Bell’s radio station. Survival and resilience through crisis are only possible through a combination of luck, skill, cooperation, and the will to persevere despite almost insurmountable odds.
The Essentiality of Friendship and Connection
Throughout Sam’s first day on the run, he is completely alone. Finding Delphy completely changes the course of his journey, and it is crucial to his survival. Although Wildfire is about what it takes to survive a fire, it is also about the importance of interpersonal connection and inter-reliance over individualism. Humans are social, and it is often only possible to survive a crisis situation with the help of others. While people are able to persevere alone, it is hard to remain positive when isolated, as readers see with Sam before he meets Delphy: He carries on, but it is the formation of a team dynamic that sees them through crisis. Phat Freddy Bell also demonstrates the importance of friendship and connection—he keeps his broadcast going at the risk of his own life, and he would have died without Sam and Delphy’s timely arrival. Moreover, Sam and Delphy might not have made it out of the woods without the help of Phat Freddy Bell, who is local to the area. Indeed, while the main connection is between Sam and Delphy, they both also importantly connect with Phat Freddy Bell at the end of the story.
Both of the main characters also rely on their love for their families to push them toward survival in the direst of circumstances. Their main goal is survival, but what both characters look for more than anything else is a phone so that they can assure their families that they are safe. Human connection, friendship, and love are all powerful motivators for survival. The intensity of what Sam and Delphy go through together makes them start to see each other as siblings toward the end of the story.
Sam and Delphy are very different people with their own strengths, weaknesses, and fears. The key to their friendship is their ability to value those strengths. One of Delphy’s biggest insecurities is her appearance, but Sam finds her beautiful when she is “loping along with a big smile on her face and her dark eyes shining (109). When Delphy considers Sam’s ability to drive the Jeep, she says that he is “an amazing person [whose] father would be so proud” (91). They forge a friendship that is strong enough to go beyond their survival situation. In the last chapter, Sam mentions that he and Delphy still “talk all the time, and […] see each other whenever” (177). The friendship and connection they initially forged to survive blossoms into a lasting bond partly because of what they learn from each other.
The friendship between Sam and Delphy is in direct thematic opposition to the political goals of the bikers. The bikers want to restrict who can live in Maine, excluding anyone that they think was born too far away. Sam says that they have a “hatred of outsiders” (177). Their politics are centered on conformity and restriction, not connection and appreciation for differences. For that reason, they focus on destruction, not on building something new, inclusive, and safe for everyone. They want to maintain an exclusive status quo in Maine, but in doing so, they destroy lives and homes indiscriminately.
Nature’s Simultaneous Power and Fragility
The wildfire is a formidable adversary for Sam and Delphy. Sam often personifies the fire, though he knows it is not really alive. He talks about the fire deciding to go in a different direction, and both Sam and Freddy feel as though the fire is a living creature devouring the woods of Maine. Personifying the fire is one way to understand its power. When confronting something so large and so deadly, ascribing a sense of intent or morality to that force can help one process or cope with the situation. In reality, though, the fire is wholly natural. It is dispassionate and indiscriminate. It has no aggression toward people, no goals, and no autonomy or will. Though it is destructive, it is not evil—it just is. That makes it all the more frightening, as a fire cannot be reasoned with. It does not care about the damage it causes, and it is extremely difficult to stop or slow down.
Fire demonstrates the power of nature, but it also shows its fragility. At the lumber camp, Sam sees “animals suddenly explode from the surrounding forest” to get away from the oncoming fire (35). Sam and Delphy barely escape the fire with the use of a Jeep; the animals fleeing the flames have less hope of surviving. Forest fires can, however, in some places and under some circumstances, benefit the environment. They can help some species of plants germinate, for instance, and they can burn away dead and dried brush, lowering the risk of more severe and uncontrollable wildfires in the future. In fact, controlled burns are a crucial tool in forest management.
Wildfires, whether caused by nature (e.g., lightning) or humans (e.g., campfire), destroy many acres of land and the animals that live there, thus destabilizing ecosystems. The massive blaze in Wildfire is a major threat to all lifeforms in Maine. Wildfire’s depiction of the fragility of the natural world puts it in the genre of climate fiction, or cli-fi. As climate change worsens, wildfires are becoming an increasingly serious threat to humans, plants, and animals in North America and beyond. The text ends with real advice on surviving wildfires and provides statistics about forest fires in recent years. Forest fires have been part of the North American landscape for a long time, but they are quickly growing more severe and dangerous.
At the beginning of the book, Phat Freddy Bell announces that Maine has gone 65 days without rain amid temperatures in the mid-90 degrees Fahrenheit, and he states that this is “the hottest, driest summer ever recorded” (7). All those factors raise the risk of wildfires, both their likelihood and their severity. Though nature didn’t start the fire, the environment is primed to allow the flames to spread—and that, too, is attributable to human influence on the natural world. While the story emphasizes the importance of friendship, teamwork, and resilience, it is also a cautionary tale about the changing environment—and a warning that, without intervention, the risk and severity of natural disasters will only grow worse.
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