In Margaret Atwood's poem "Morning in the Burned House," I believe that she strongly suggests that the past strongly dictates who we are, and that past experiences will not be a long forgotten memory but will be something that will be reminisced for as long as we live, we will always look back on it. In the first few stanzas. the speaker states that they are inside a burned house eating their breakfast and yet there is nothing there, neither breakfast nor house, just the speaker. In my opinion, the speaker is looking back and coming back to their own past and viewing it as if they were reliving it, not as a ghost but their own point of view through fragments from broken pieces of time, scattered due to a painful and traumatic past. Nothing the speaker talks about exists now, everything has been taken away by the flames. This is portrayed by the word "burned," this word usually represents something destroyed and vanished due to the engulfing flames, perhaps the traumatic experiences of the speaker affected them to a great extent which made everything unrecoverable.
Further more the second stanza stated that the speaker was all alone, this corresponds to when the speaker makes note of the clothes being hung and the dishes in the sink yet no one is around this establishes a sense of independence, separation and the loneliness which surrounded the speaker then. Also this could be interpreted as the speaker being separated from their family due to a tragic death, they had no one to talk and share their pain with, they only had themselves to hold on to. Another aspect to recognize is the way the speaker calls their leaving quarters, the speaker calls it a house and not a home, these words are very similar yet split in meaning. .
A home is somewhere you share laughs and have fun with your family and friends, and a house is just a physical space where you really don't connect with, it's just a space where people can live.
