Fahrenheit 451

Book Burning From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So….why did Ray Bradbury write a book about the burning books anyway? Let’s look at the forces of history and culture that motivated him to write, and many readers to read, this book.

Fahrenheit 451

Book burning is the practice of ceremoniously destroying by fire one or more copies of a book or other written material. In modern times other forms of media, such as gramophone records, CDs and video tapes have also been ceremoniously burned or torched.

The practice, often carried out publicly, is usually motivated by moral, political or religious objections to the material.

Fahrenheit 451

Many people find book burning to be offensive for a variety of reasons. Some feel it is a form of censorship that religious or political leaders practice against those ideas that they oppose. This is especially true of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Those who oppose book burning on those grounds often equate those who burn books with Nazis.

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Notable book burning incidents: Following the advice of Li Si, Qin Shi Huang

ordered all philosophy books and history books from states other than Qin—except copies in the imperial library for official uses—to be burned 213 BC. This was accompanied by the live burial of a large number of intellectuals, who did not comply with the state dogma

Fahrenheit 451

According to the New Testament book of Acts, early converts to Christianity in Ephesus who had previously practiced sorcery burned their scrolls: "A number who had practised sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas." (Acts 19:19, NIV) The term sorcery refers to magical practices.

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Christian books were burnt by a decree of emperor Diocletian in 303, calling for an increased persecution of Christians.

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In 1242, French crown had burned all Talmud copies in Paris, after it was found guilty in Paris trial(sometimes called "the Paris debate").

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In 1410 John Wycliffe's books were burnt by the illiterate Prague archbishop Zbyněk Zajic z Házmburka in the court of his palace in Lesser Town of Prague to hinder the spread of Jan Hus' teaching.

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In 1497 the Bonfire of the Vanities, preached by Girolamo Savonarola, consumed pornography, lewd pictures, pagan books, gaming tables, cosmetics, copies of Boccaccio's Decameron, and all the works of Ovid which could be found in Florence.

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Burning books is often associated with the Nazi regime. On May 10, 1933, Nazis in Berlin burned works of Jewish authors, and the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and other works considered "un-German".

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Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible was burned in Germany in 1624 by order of the Pope.

In 1683 several books by Thomas Hobbes and other authors were burnt in Oxford University.

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In 1842, officials at the school for the blind in Paris France, were ordered by its new director, Armand Dufau, to burn books written in the new braille code. After every braille book at the institute that could be found was burned, supporters of the code's inventor, Louis Braille, rebelled against Dufau by continuing to use the code, and braille was eventually restored at the school.

Fahrenheit 451

In 1917 in Russia the Bolsheviks ordered the destructions of all books contrary to Communism, including many religious works, works in favour of the Czarist history, works on nationalism, works on freedom and economic profit.

Fahrenheit 451 The works of Jewish authors and other "degenerate"

books were burnt by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

May 10, 1933 on the Opernplatz in Berlin, S.A. and Nazi youth groups burned around 20,000 books from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and the Humboldt University; including works by Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and H.G. Wells. Student groups throughout Germany also carried out their own book burnings on that day and in the following weeks. Erich Kastner wrote a self-ironic account (published only after the fall of Nazism) of having witnessed the burning of his own books, on that occasion.

Fahrenheit 451

Books burned…

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 In 1948, at Binghamton, New York children -

overseen by priests, teachers, and parents - publicly burned around 2000 comic books.

In May 1981 Sinhalese police officers on rampage burned the public library of Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka; a huge library collection, which was the second largest library in Asia, was destroyed: 97,000 books and very rare collection of ancient palm leaf volumes were among them

Fahrenheit 451

The novel The Satanic Verses has been the subject of bookburnings by Muslims, for instance at Bolton and Bradford in 1989.

In 1992 the Oriental Institute (Orijentalni institut) in Sarajevo was attacked by Serb nationalist forces with incendiary grenades and the whole collection was burned, the largest single act of book-burning in modern history.

Fahrenheit 451 In the 1990s congregants of the Full Gospel

Assembly in Grande Cache, Alberta, Canada burned books with ideas in them that they did not agree with, or that they deemed to contain ideas contrary to the teachings of God.

There have been several incidents of Harry Potter books being burned, including those directed by churches at Alamogordo, New Mexico, Charleston, South Carolina, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Fahrenheit 451 In the introduction of the 1967

Simon and Schuster book club editon of Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury implies that the Nazi book burnings drove him to write the short story/novella the Fireman which was the precursor along with the foundation for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (451°F being the temperature at which paper autoignites), stating "It follows then that when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one in the same flesh."

Fahrenheit 451 On March 4, 1966, John Lennon said that the Beatles were more

popular than Jesus meaning that Christianity (and religion in general) were getting so weak and unpopular that a rock 'n' roll group (the Beatles) were more popular than it at the time. He just said it as an example to make his point, that Christianity was not popular among young people, and he certainly didn't want to compare the Beatles with Jesus or to show off himself as being better or greater than Jesus. But when the above statement was printed out of context in Anerican teen Magazine "Datebook" a few months later, great uproar broke out.

American radio stations banned Beatles records. Some even went so far as to organize burning of Beatles records and photographs, and there were scenes of boys and girls jumping on Beatles records, holding burning Beatles photographs and grinning and holding banners that said "Jesus died for you John Lennon" and "John Lennon is Satan"!!!(

Fahrenheit 451

In one episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson sees a Book-Mobile being driven by Reverend Lovejoy; however, the letters behind a tree reveal that it actually reads Book-Burning-Mobile.

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The point? Remembering what theme is… How did the facts we just looked at, which

Bradbury would have also known, impact Ray Bradbury’s themes in this novel?

Why would he have been concerned with the burning of books?

What might he hope would happen to people’s thinking after reading a book about book burning as a form of censorship?