When is smoke a good or bad thing?

After making my rhetorical analysis prompt for Maus Volume II, I began to think more on the things that I prompted the essay writers to write about. Page 69 of Maus Volume II had a motif of smoke, and how it related to the ovens in Auschwitz, being a kind of poison for Vladek that reminds him of the past. This is shown by showing the smoke from Artie’s cigarette right above the Auschwitz chimney as to indicate that it is coming from the chimney in which the Germans burned Jews alive. Other visual cues are there as well, but it is safe to say that Spiegelman wanted us to view smoke in a negative way in this page. Now, as I am looking back on it, smoke seems like a negative thing in most contexts, but there are some times when it seems like smoke is held in a positive light, despite what the common feeling is towards it. So I wanted to ask, “In literature, when is smoke a good thing, and when is it a bad thing?”

Maus has several examples of painting smoke in a negative light, like the one above.

Smoke is considered bad in lots of situations. Obviously Maus is one example, but smoke in general can represent things like health problems when we talk about people smoking, or things burning down. Usually with the latter, smoke is used as some kind of omen or foreshadowing for a bad thing that’s about to happen, and it is usually attributed to an important place or thing being burnt down. On the flip side, smoke can be considered positive, despite what many people are inclined to believe because of the previous uses of smoke in literature in this paragraph, which are used quite often. Just take a look at Lord of the Flies. Smoke is positive for some parts of the book because it allows the boys to signal to ships that they are stranded. Smoke is used like this a lot, to signal to other people to do something, and so when we read that smoke is seen we think that this is good in these scenarios. Smoke can also be a positive thing when something that is not liked by us is burnt down, and the smoke is used to show all the bad memories and experiences the character(s) had with this thing flying away. But then why, if there are still positive uses of smoke, do we think negatively of smoke anyway?

First we have to talk about where smoke even comes from. Fire is what causes smoke, is what comes to mind at first. But fire can have positive or negative connotations and is widely regarded as a neutral thing. Smoke, on the other hand, can also have positive or negative connotations, but is widely regarded as negative. The main reason is due to its appearance and what it is associated with. While fire has bright, vibrant colors, smoke is dark and black, and is not comfortable to be around either, as people cough, inhale, and choke in smoke. Also, people usually associate smoke with health problems nowadays, because of the large amount of people having health complications like lung cancer after smoking for most of their lives. They could also associate smoke with wildfires, because those are also an issue in the world that is growing. Smoke is also associated with global warming and destroying the environment with pollution. Finally, there isn’t a lot of use for the positive parts of smoke either, because with the internet and smartphones we don’t really need to use smoke signals, and even burning things we don’t like is viewed in a negative light in. society, for obvious reasons. The bottom line is, using certain things in the real world in your own piece will mean that some of the connotation from the real world will transfer over into your piece as well, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.