Burning Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Burning.
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Burning Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Burning.
This section contains 436 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Burning Short Guide

Burning Summary & Study Guide Description

Burning Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Techniques/Literary Precedents on Burning by Diane Johnson.

Preview of Burning Summary:

The events in Burning all take place on a single day in Los Angeles, the day of the great Bel Air fire. But before the actual fire is so much as ignited, Johnson begins using it as her central metaphor in a novel that satirizes California's child welfare system, the drug scene, and above all the lifestyles of people living in Southern California.

Maxine ("Max") Gartman finds that her children may be taken away from her if she is found to be an unfit mother. In fact, she has a serious drug problem, but she persuades Bingo Edwards, her psychiatrist's neighbor, to pose as herself in the hope that Bingo's evidently straight character will stave off the do-gooding bureaucrats. Bingo's day is almost entirely taken up with interviews with social-welfare people, who finally determine — much to her outrage and chagrin — that she...

This section contains 436 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Burning Short Guide
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Gale
Burning from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.