Little Fires Everywhere

“The firemen said there were little fires everywhere […] Multiple points of origin. Possible use of accelerant. Not an accident.” 

The statement here echoes the title, Little Fires Everywhere, suggesting that there are multiple inciting incidents for the uprooting of the Richardsons’ lives in Shaker Heights. While Mrs. Richardson blames Mia for creating unwanted change in her home, a myriad of factors contribute to the shattering of Shaker Heights as a perfect town, one of which is that its foundations are built upon an ideal in the first place.

“Every house on Winslow Road held two families, but outside appeared to hold only one. They had been designed that way on purpose. It allowed residents to avoid the stigma of living in a duplex house—of renting, instead of owning—and allowed the city planners to preserve the appearance of the street, as everyone knew neighborhoods with rentals were less desirable.” 

The house that Mrs. Richardson rents out to a moving cast of people is on Winslow Road. In contrast to her large family house, the houses on Winslow Road are duplexes that are not owned by the inhabitants but are rental properties. This distinction between owning a home and renting one is a class marker that distinguishes the more affluent people of Shaker Heights from those less fortunate. In an effort to erase class difference in the town, the design of these duplexes to mirrors single-family homes. This is suggestive of the lengths that the town will take to preserve a sense of upper-middle-class normalcy.

“In fact, the city’s motto was—literally, as Lexie would have said—‘Most communities just happen; the best are planned’; the underlying philosophy being that everything could—and should—be planned out, and that by doing so you could avoid the unseemly, the unpleasant, and the disastrous.” 

The description of Shaker Heights’s history as a planned city suggests that its reliance on rules and structure is a means of protecting against social disorder.