According to author Ray Bradbury, what building is civilization’s brain?
Subject: Censorship - Book Burning
Event: Campus Book Burnings in Germany, 1933
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -Ray Bradbury
On the evening of May 10, 1933, Students on 34 campuses across Germany gathered to burn books that were deemed “un-German.” The book burnings were one of several actions taken by the Nazi party in the years leading up to World War II to bring German arts and culture in line with Nazi goals.
More than just spontaneous demonstrations, the book burnings were organized affairs, complete with ceremonial music and scripted statements called “fire oaths” that were read aloud as students tossed books onto bonfires.
In Berlin, where over 40,000 students and Nazi officials gathered, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, delivered a scathing speech denouncing the decadence and moral corruption found in the unwanted books.
Any book expressing ideas that in any way ran counter to Nazi ideologies was deemed fit for incineration. The following is a small sample of some of the authors whose books were burned: Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Helen Keller.
Also burned on May 10th were works by the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose words foreshadowed the horror to come: “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people” (1).
Germany, of course, is not the only place where there have been book burnings. In 1973, Charles McCarthy, Chairman of a school board in North Dakota had copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five burned because of its “obscene language.” Fortunately, many denounced the book burning, including the book’s author, who sent a letter to McCarthy, saying the following:
I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own. (2)
One author was so concerned with book burning that he wrote a dystopian novel presenting a future in which books are outlawed. Because homes are built of fireproof material, the firemen no longer put out fires; instead, they make fires, burning illegal books.
The book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wrote the first draft of the novel in a typing room located in the basement of the University of California Library. The typewriter was on a timer connected to a change slot. For one dime Bradbury got thirty minutes of typing. (He spent $9.80 to complete the first draft).
When he wasn’t typing furiously against the clock, Bradbury would go upstairs to explore the library:
There I strolled, lost in love, down the corridors, and through the stacks, touching books, pulling volumes out, turning pages, thrusting volumes back, drowning in all the good stuffs that are the essence of the libraries. What a place, don’t you agree, to write a novel about burning books in the Future. (3)
Bradbury had more than just a love affair with books. For him they are the backbone of civilization as illustrated by a statement he made in an interview published in the 50th Anniversary Edition of Fahrenheit 451:
Let’s imagine there’s an earthquake tomorrow in the average university town. If only two buildings remained intact at the end of the earthquake, what would they have to be in order to rebuild everything that had been lost? Number one would be the medical building, because you need that to help people survive, to heal injuries and sickness. The other building would be the library. All the other buildings are contained in that one. People could go into the library and get all the books they needed in literature or social economics or politics or engineering and take the books out on the lawn and sit down and read. Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization (4).
Each September since 1982, the American Library Association has sponsored Banned Books Week, a national campaign that promotes the freedom to read and that celebrates a diversity of ideas, even those that are unorthodox or unpopular. Activities during the week include public readings, panel discussions, and even a teen fashion show where designers display original fashion inspired by challenged or banned books (5).
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What happened on college campuses in Germany on the night of May 10, 1933, and what does it have in common with Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451? According to Ray Bradbury, what are the two most essential buildings for any civilization?
Challenge - Only You Can Prevent Book Burning: What are some examples of books that have been banned or challenged? Research some books that have been frequently banned or challenged. Select one and write a report that gives a brief overview of the book and its author, along with some details on the specific context in which it was banned or challenged.
Sources:
1-United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Book Burning”
2-Vonnegutt, Kurt. “I Am Very Real.” Lettersofnote.com 30 March 2012.
4 – Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. The 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Random House.
5-Banned Books Week. bannedbooksweek.org
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment