by Allison Lee
“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.”
That is the opening of Ray Bradbury’s acclaimed Fahrenheit 451, now widely championed as a literary classic just shy of 200 pages. Upon closing the covers of this book, my mind couldn’t help but flutter toward my earlier years of schooling, when I was stuffed away in the corner of the classroom as we read about Qin Shi Huang’s heartless literary inquisition. It was a memory—no, a history—that I had tucked away in the depths of my mind.
The first time I was taught that part of history, I took it as it was—factual. It never occurred to me to delve into the reasons for the burning and the burying, I had always thought the Emperor did it for fun—because he wielded the power to do so. After all, which successful and problematic leader in all of history didn’t commit atrocities simply because they could?
Bradbury’s masterpiece welcomes us into a dystopia where books are marked illegal because people are no longer curious and the government dictates that reading has people’s brain gears turning too much. When people think too much or develop too much curiosity, they begin to reason, to logicalize, to compare, to analyze, to long for more—for better. Analyzing critically allows us to detect faults in policies and practices; it makes us more aware of social and political ongoings and reminds us that we have a voice to be weaponized. However, the government and big corporations do not like it when people are able to think for themselves and call their own shots in life.
Qin Shi Huang’s reign was and still is widely associated with the phrase ‘焚书坑儒’ —burning of books, burying of scholars. The primary reason he had sent records to flames was to avoid his people making comparisons of his rule with past reigns. He was determined to rewrite the history of China in his own way, what with the unification of the country. Records that had nothing to do with medicine, agriculture, divination, and the history of the Qin dynasty were ordered to be burned. Years later, scholars who were discovered to be in possession of illegal books were also buried alive, though there is no concrete evidence of this incident taking place during Qin Shi Huang’s reign.
When the topic of book-burning surfaces, the Chinese Emperor’s acts are what come to mind; however, history has a peculiar way of repeating itself. It’s the universe’s way of testing us, to see if we have learned anything.
Over the course of history, many have tried to bring about the wanton destruction of literary treasures, including but not limited to the burning of Jewish (1244), Aztec (1560s), and Mayan (1560s) manuscripts; the conflagration of the Library of Alexandra, Imperial Library of Luoyang, Library of al-Hakam II, House of Wisdom, Library of Congress, and Jaffna Public Library, just to name a few.
The 1930s were chaotic enough as they were, what with the rise of Hitler and the looming threat of the Second World War. What history books fail to mention, however, was the Nazis’ book burnings. All written works that had opposed Nazism were sent to the burning pile, their pages burnt to a crisp, a crimson spectacle for all to see: This is the aftermath if you go against our ideologies, and books are only the beginning. Books written by Jewish, communist, anarchist, socialist, and liberal authors were quickly ushered into the flames, with one of the very first books to be burned being written by Karl Marx.
So, why the obsession with burning? Why do we, a collective society that advocates for peace and quiet, love to see things shoot up in embers of ruby and sparks of scarlet?
Fire has always been a powerful motif in the world of writing. Greek mythology proclaims that it was Prometheus who had defied the gods by stealing fire and then gifting it to humans. It is something sacred, something Prometheus was willing to risk going to Tartarus for. There is something so terribly dangerous and magnificent with fire that civilization boomed thereafter the discovery of it: We built cities and conquered lands, we had motors running and electricity flowing. We razed empires and forged weapons, we raced to space and warmed our homes.
Fire, so it would seem, is a double-edged sword. It signifies rebirth and destruction, for none can exist without the other. Something always has to fall for another to rise. This, then, would appear to be the logical answer to our question.
We burn the old to create new. We are of the opinion that if we remove everything that came before us or that goes against our beliefs, we can rewrite the pages and insert our narratives. With every ash that crumbles to the ground, we assume that part of the past has been erased. This is why we burn letters from ex-lovers. It’s why Qin Shi Huang did away with anything that might allow his people a slither of doubt in his reign. It’s why the Nazis cleansed their literary selection of opposing ideologies. The belief that we can change history—collective or personal—is deeply rooted in us. It is a hope we want to hold on to—however wrong and hallucinatory—that after the pain of the flame comes a slate that we can simply dust the ashes off of.
But are literary fires simply ignited to rewrite narratives? Could it be that simple? Or is it something much more sinister, much like everything else wandering the undergrounds of this convoluted world?
There is, of course, talk of government censorship—one of the major themes in Bradbury’s novella. In Fahrenheit 451, the government banned the possession and consumption of books lest the people become as smart as or smarter than the government itself. In the perfect dystopia, the ruled are docile while the rulers are oppressive.
This world is no stranger to censorship. We have seen the occurrence of two major wars and know that censorship goes hand-in-hand with propaganda, but that is beside the point. Bradbury’s ultimate argument when it comes to censorship is that it is introduced by the government but kept in place by the people.
The citizens nestled between the crevices of Fahrenheit 451 wanted to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, so they snapped their heads in the direction of technology. Colorful programs, loud advertisements, and speeding cars became the norm. Attention spans shrank. These people enjoyed being force-fed information rather than picking up paperbacks and deciding what they want to learn, what they want to gain. While technology exists, there isn’t a single morsel of life that lives within it; books hold the life—if not, lives—of somebody else. A hand reaching out from the pages to lure you into a moment’s worth of escape.
What’s haunting about Fahrenheit 451 is how there is a great chance that our society will morph into one just like it. Instead of people in power or high-up institutions dictating what we can and cannot read, we become the villains in our own stories. We become the ones that set those literary fires.
History has sent heaps after heaps of books, libraries after libraries of stories to literary chop shops as if taking apart chapters, then paragraphs, then sentences can destroy the world’s identity—fictional or real. We often pride ourselves on advancements in medicine and technology and negate the importance of these written works.
Books, whatever genre they may be, serve as the foundation of humankind. Dystopias warn us not to tread too far, fiction serves us a bountiful platter of respite from reality, memoirs remind us of the permanence of hardship, thrillers tell us that the scariest monsters live within ourselves, and above all, a well-crafted book reminds us of who we were, who we are, and who we can be.
“We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt