The Great Fire Overview

This Study Guide consists of approximately 13 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Great Fire.

The Great Fire Overview

This Study Guide consists of approximately 13 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Great Fire.
This section contains 352 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The Great Fire Short Guide

The Great Fire Summary & Study Guide Description

The Great Fire 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 Related Titles/Adaptations on The Great Fire by Jim Murphy.

Preview of The Great Fire Summary:

On October 8, 1871, on a lazy Sunday, a fire broke out in a barn near the edge of Chicago. According to Murphy, no one knows for certain how the fire started. He refutes the popular myth that it began when a cow being milked by Catherine O'Leary kicked over a gas lamp, saying that it was impossible for O'Leary to have been in the barn at the time.

At that time, Chicago was in the midst of a long drought, making its wooden buildings and wooden sidewalks very dry and thus vulnerable to fire. The city had already experienced a number of relatively small fires, including an especially troublesome one that the fire department had extinguished the previous day near the neighborhood of the O'Learys. Still, the fire department was well organized and well equipped, and it had been extinguishing fires with a high degree of success. Even so...

This section contains 352 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The Great Fire Short Guide
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Gale
The Great Fire from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.