Fahrenheit 451
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why do you think they burn the books?
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they burn the books because they feel it is a threat to government. They can't have someone outsmarting them. The government wants everyone to the be same (houses, lifestyles, and even intelligence) with an educated citizen, they have more intellectual freedom which is strictly forbid by the government.
sounds good to me, Kristen and Reemas.
Kristen wrote: "they burn the books because they feel it is a threat to government. They can't have someone outsmarting them. The government wants everyone to the be same (houses, lifestyles, and even intelligen..."When the truth is your enemy, you burn the message.
Knowledge is not power. Control of knowledge is power.
Interesting... I would say a both are right. Knowledge of the truth is power and maybe control of how knowledge is given/allowed can be a greater power.
Actually, Hitler utilized students to burn books. It started with Jewish intellectual's works and then was widened to include works that the Third Reich considered "unGerman". This is often a tool of oppressive regimes.
One of the things that absolutely surprised me when I visited the Holocaust museum was that very point. Also that before anything really "happened" with the Jewish people, Hitler got rid of those who might oppose him for leadership.BTW, I mentioned it on another list, not sure if here. The is a YA book The Wave about a teacher trying to answer the students' questions of why people in Germany just let it happen. The book is based on a real life school situation. I didn't think I'd like it but I loved it. And the amazing thing, Seniors were asked what full length piece of literate that was mandatory reading over these four years is the one you enjoyed the most? Hands down, The Wave, which was summer reading when entering 9th grade.
They probably burned the books because they hated them and they hated reading them. Just like me. (well the majority of the books)
Karen B wrote: "Robin,The more I read it, the more things I find starting to happen in our society today. It's eerie in a way. When I read about the seashells in the ears, I immediately thought of i-pods. We ..."
I think that they burn the books, because they realized that people might read them and want that kind of life (which they consider unstable).
Thanks. It's like the book, "The Other Side of the Island", where a girl's mind of what she had known is warped into what her superiors want her to believe. They want the world to be a better place, so they ban any kind of "bad reading". In reality, for both of these books, they are just hurting them more by not letting everyone live up to their full potential.
Because it's less work than rewriting them (as in 1984).Knowledge has always been a thorn in the side of power.
Most likely because the government is afraid of the people creating ideas and thinking for themselves. Reading this book made me realize how scary it would be without books.
Karen B wrote: "Truly truly scary though ... fact school libraries where all the books are being removed to make room for more computers. And students are told to use library time to research on the computer...."Yes it is. But there is an irony in this discussion. Many of the members here on GR use the various electronic books now. I've read postings by some who talk about how books are just too bulky, heavy and take up to much room and how superior the e-book readers are. Yes they are reading, but gradually the book is going away. Being replaced by computers. Actually it's not gradual. It's happening alot faster than I ever thought it would. Twenty years ago the electronic book reader was just a neat prop on Star Trek. I thought it would be years before it was a reality. As in after I was dead. But here it is.
In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury the job of the firemen is to burn books. The firemen burn books because books are a threat to society and government. Different books propose different ideas therefore causing conflict. Burning books also keeps people from being educated because educated people would know that burning books is stupid. In the society of Fahrenheit 451, they believed that burning books would keep conflict from happening, because once again with different books different ideas are proposed throughout the books therefore causing conflict, which is exactly what the government did not want. Along with burning books the Bible, Torah, Quran, and any books regarding religion would have been burned...The people have no concept of God or anything different than the current goverment. Which gives the government total power over the people.
And yes it is pretty scary that books are being taken out of my school library to make more room for computers. And that they now have e-books. JUst like emotion is lost through translation. When you have an electronic version of a book, it is similar to a translation. When I am holding a book, a real book I can smell the pages every time I flip them and I get the feeling that I am holding real, genuine literature. But with and ebook or nook I feel like I am holding another electronic that is no different from others. The words on the DIGITAL screen seem to have no significant meaning. Not that books aren't important because they are but we need BOOKS more than we think we do. To me the nook is another step toward the society of Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, The Giver, and 1984.
I have books in my collection that date from the 1870's - 1930's. Not a ton, but a few. It doesn't matter that they now contain information that is dated or have ideas that might not be "politically correct" in 2011. What's important is they provide a physical link to the past. I'm not Luddite, but a part of me isn't happy about books being displaced/replaced by computers. Guess I'm just old because I'm sounding like my grandparents some thirty years ago.
knowledge is power. power creates a difference in classes and social statuses. they wanted a world of complete equality. and the best way to do it was to eliminate free thought.
I think they burned books so everybody can think the same. Also, I think they wanted people to not be smart so no one gets hurt, but that is stupid.The book was interesting.
Yes, Knowledge is power and how you use the power is also telling. I thought this book was horrific, burning beautiful books, it is also like censorship and what the powers that be tell people the books they should and should not be reading. And the whole Mark Twain book, Tom Sawyer and that whole debate.
or What you don't know won't hurt you.
What you don't know can kill you.
Because they want to make the general public weaker by making them stupid by not letting them read?
They should have realized all you need to do is to air "Keeping up with the Kardashians."
It's not so much that the government is trying to deprive people of freedom of thought, although once the banning of books had been set in motion that was definitely a factor. Bradbury makes it clear that people began to look to escape from reality. Books teach critical thinking and inadvertently force the readers to contemplate topics like human nature, the nature of free will and conflict, etc. These are not popular thoughts when all one wants to do is get away from the difficult problems faced by the world. As such, people elected to live by a "if I can't see you you can't see me" type of world view: if I am not aware of the world's problems, it is as if they don't exist.
In this united states our freedom is slowley dissapearing before our eyes... every new law thats written becomes closer and closer to Dictatorship. we used to have "freedom of speech" which is sapost to be our rite( its in our constitution ) and now we get fined and jailed for speaking our mind. our constitution also ( A RITE TO BEAR ARMS ) theres laws now that dictate whos allowed and who isnt. it also says that every " MAN " is created EQUAL....? ARE WE REALLY ???? I dought it and dont think so.
They were burned because it was a way to censor what the government didn't want them to see. The people weren't given the right to think freely.
To put it simply: Knowledge is power!
Simply put, humanity couldn't bear having to put forth the effort to gain the knowledge from the printed word when more 'interesting' media was available (e.g. television, tabloids, factoid learning). As society drifted farther away from books, they began to become more uniform. They had all the same experiences, so there was no originality, with the exception of those who read. As a rule of humanity, the unknown is feared, and the feared is hated and destroyed. These 'new' ideas that contradicted the lifestyle of so many sparked a xenophobic coup against the well-read, which in turn led to the creation of the firemen, whose responsibility it was to destroy the unknown, time-consuming, thought-provoking evil of the printed word. This is where society is in the time of Fahrenheit 451. Yes, knowledge is power, but so is the voice of society. The conflict between knowledge and society is depicted in many ways throughout many different books, but Bradbury feared that the world would favour the simple rather than the mundane. This, I believe, is why the books were sentenced to burn.
Miguel wrote: "I think that they burn the b0ok5 bekuz they are trying t0 start a new trend and the b0ok5 have info that the pe0ple can leaRn 4rm them (B0ok5) aNd the pe0pLe that are staRtinG the nEw TrenD d0nt wa..."“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.”
Book burning is both a literal act and a symbolic one, whose intent is to quiet the human soul.
They were trying to promote the new Kindle e-reader!
Braeden wrote: "I disagree, the people willingly and happily live under life without books, the government is just an enforcer of the will of the majority."Correct. This is explicitly stated in the book. It was the people who demanded everything that offended them be removed, until there was nothing left.
Books are knowledge, knowledge is power, power is freedom.
Mark wrote: "To put it simply: Knowledge is power!"My feelings precisely!!!
"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless."This is exactly from the book why they burned books. People don't want ideas and honestly. Period. That's how you destroy society and people's ideas. Same thing that happened in 1984.
It's not the same thing. In this book the people did it to themselves--an important distinction.
They burn the books to keep people from developing an individual spirit and the ability to think critically. People who conform to the masses --without seeking for expression of a unique character-- are easier to herd by the government.
Ignorance is a viable tool for the dystopian government as it enacts them to keep control of the citizens thoughts and mindset. Therefore, books provide a gateway to the citizens to lose their ignorance and become knowledgeable in multiple aspects of modern society. So, by burning the books the dystopian government maintains its power held over society and their free thought.
I believe they burn the books in order to put a halt to the spread of information, and to prevent the people from questioning their society’s ways. If people lack knowledge they’ll be easier to control and manipulate.
I think that they burn books because it is a way that the government controls the people. Buy not letting the read they don't learn or have the ultimate knowledge which can be considered as power, leaving the government with the ultimate power and control
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I had a great-great aunt who was a teacher and she had a student who was always playing mean tricks. One day as she went down the aisle he shook his ink pen and deliberately got ink all over her beautiful new lavender suit. She picked up a vase of flowers and walked around the room talking about the lesson and pulling off dry leaves and then dropped it on his head and said "Oh excuse me, I am so sorry I lost my grip." She also got another boy outside of the room and took off her shoe and hit him with the heel and said if he complained, she'd deny it because the heel of her shoe didn't leave marks. Before corporal punishment was illegal.