We've got lots to say about fire, Shmoopsters, so before we go any further, we'd like to kindly ask you to hop on over to the "Symbols" section and read up on it over there. We promise it will help you make sense of the title, and we're more than happy to wait.
Okay. You back? You ready to dig a little bit deeper now?
Let's talk about the forgotten part of the title, Forgotten Fire. Be honest: When you first heard Vahan say this book takes place in 1915 during the Turkish-Armenian war, did you know what that was? A whole lot of you are going to answer that question with a solid no. That's because this is one of the events that history books have largely forgotten, in large part due to the Turkish government's refusal to acknowledge that such an atrocity ever took place. So though it practically burned out an entire population of people, this fire remains largely forgotten in people's lives.
The title, then, refers to both the genocide of the Armenian people and our collective failure to carry this atrocity forward. And then the book does its darndest to make sure we remember.