Fahrenheit 451: Character Analysis

Book burning is defined as “the ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in

Inference: Society brainwashed themselves into thinking that they are happy and must burn books to remain happy after ignorance is bliss.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them” (Ray Bradbury). Bradbury means that burning books takes up too much time and money. If you just get people to stop reading them, people will eventually stop writing and publishing books so there will be nothing new to destroy.

One time when a lot of books were burned was during World War II. Hitler and the Nazis banned books that they thought were un-German. Many of these books were Jewish books. Hitler wanted to create a whole education system where everyone had the same goal. Taking away literature that didn’t support this goal kept people from thinking for themselves. Some well known authors’ books were burned including Helen Keller, Jack London, Albert Einstein and many others.

Ever since the Qin Dynasty in 200 BC, book burning has been a strong symbol to represent a hate filled destruction of disliked knowledge. When people would have a problem with a certain literature, they would just simply burn the books to eliminate such a problem, but it has a deeper meaning than just the removal of paper and ink from a society. According to an article about book burning at http://www.theguardian.com/, books are living things that have the potential to affect people just as much as the writer. Therefore most books can be viewed as dangerous in one way or another.

Burning of books is a sin for those who have knowledge. Burning books is burning knowledge that people could be learning from. When someone burns a book, it’s just like disobeying their parents, guardian, any person who is older than them, or even god. It’s a prevention of gaining knowledge for those who already have it or don’t have any knowledge at all. Burning books is taking away the knowledge of people and is causing the society to replace books with technology.

Many different genres of books were destroyed. Most They didn’t books that were destroyed were written by the Jews, communists, etc. In the article, it says “simply burn books which they

Going back as far as humans go, we have kept a close track of history, with pictures and symbols on walls, and later words on pages that would someday become books. Those people have passed away long ago, but their words, their symbols are still there. Books are the true essence of human nature, humans are forgetful, but books never forget what you tell them. Every single paper, article, and book you have ever read, is history. History is a remarkable treasure with immense value and this why we cherish it so much. Books themselves have incredible worth because of the information they contain. However if we were to burn all books, essentially erase all history, and I had a chance to save one copy, I would save Symptoms of

“The books are to remind us what fools we are” (Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451). Book Burning has been around ever since books have. All throughout history from biblical to modern time book have been burned. Rarely are books burned for no reason, some of the most common reasons books are burned for religiously or politically. However is burning books good or bad for society? Whether if book burning is good or bad depends on how you see the reason they are being burned. There are many ways that book burning is good but many that are bad.

This book burning happened in 1948 soon after ww2. The people who were responsible for these burned books are well intentioned parents and citizens of the united states, and they were convincing their children to burn their comic books. Frederic Wertham, psychiatrist born in germany, worked in a hospital treating bad children. He found that the children read comic books and then concluded that the comic books are the cause of children becoming criminals.

Since the very first book ever made to now books have been passed on through multiple generations. Books contain knowledge that humans depend on. 1940 May 6th the Book of Fire occured. That day so many facts, emotions, events, and a variety of forms of knowledge were lost in a fire. The quotation “where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings” to me means that when all of those books were burned so many generations of humans learning from those stories were lost that you may aswell burn human beings themselves. Liesel Meminger was so attached to the grave diggers handbook. She was determined to read it and understand every single part

I do believe that books are not absolutely dead things and that they can possess the power to really connect with the reader and cause that reader to feel something. For example, when was the last time you read a piece of literature and really connected with the situation or the characters or read something else that caused you to change the way you do something or live. This is precisely one of the reasons that people burn books. They are so scared of what could happen if the ideas presented in the book reach other members of the society that they decide to get rid of them in a harsh and symbolic way: burning

On May 10, 1933 over 40,000 people joined together in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany to burn more than 25,000 volumes of books that clouded the ideal characteristics of a german man. This was the one of the more recent revolutionary book burnings that has taken place in the past 100 years. People are often frightened or do not like change, this closes their eyes to ideas that are different from what they know. The students that were in charge of this book burning did this as an act of erasing the past and the ideas that contradict what they believe now as a way to eliminate one side of a two sided argument.

In 1644 john Milton was attempting to preserve the books which were being destroyed through censorship. He even said, “He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself” I agree with him.

Throughout History there have been hundreds of book burnings all over the world. All the way back, in the days of ancient China, there was an Emperor that burned books and scrolls about history and philosophy, and even went as far as to bury scholars alive to hide the information in the text. However, book burnings are not always an event of ancient history, and they’re not always so far away either. Here, in the United States, in 2010 a small church group in Gainesville Florida threw hundreds of copies of the Koran in a pile and set them on fire as commemoration of the 9/11 terrorist attack, despite being warned not to. Though I'm sure the people burning the books may give you a list of reasons for doing so, but in the end a great majority of these book burnings were fueled by people's hatred and inability to accept one another's differences.