Fire on the Home Front - The PossessiveGeneral Douglas Macarthur said that "the best time to meet the threat [of war] is at the beginning. It is more easy to put out a fire at first when it's small, then after it becomes a roaring inferno" (quoted in Urofsky, Part 9) The mother in Sharon Olds' "The Possessive" no doubt feels the same way. .War is a terrible time between two or more nations fighting to separate themselves or for some other reason; nations are fighting for property rights and independence. In "The Possessive", Olds uses powerful images of. war, such as helmets, blades and fires, to show how her daughter looks like a country at war has moved away from her Sharon Olds says: “In her shiny helmet she looks. towards me as through a great distance” (Olds, 506). The helmet illustrates the imagery that Olds uses to show the warlike tone of his poem. In modern wars, people see images of cruise missiles and stealth bombers on CNN. However, when asked what they envision when they think of war, some talk about guns, knives, helmets and fires. As Olds talks about her daughter, she realizes that a looming battle is yet to come. This battle will also be about possession. When his daughter sits in the barber's chair, Olds realizes that his daughter will soon reach adolescence. Adolescence is a time when parents fight over cars, boys, and other rights with their children. Children and parents will argue over the right to have their hair cut. As Olds reports, his daughter “went to the barber, that knife grinder, / and had the ends of her hair sharpened” (506). Sharp knives and sharp objects are another image of war. Soldiers must ensure that their instruments are perfectly sharpened if they want to win the war. The first time Olds speaks of the coming battle occurs during the warrior image of the haircut. These first warlike images set the tone for the rest of the piece. The most vivid and important warrior image used by Olds in "The Possessive" is the image of fire. Fire imagery appears more than once in the play. Olds writes that "distant fires can be seen in the resinous light of his eyes." (506).