Book essay by Lacy

Book Essay

Lacy Pittman

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Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Fire. One word describes the end of all evidence. How can a chemical reaction so beautiful be so destructive? How can a brightly lit, golden-orange, flame ruin anything it touches? Fire is one of the hugest themes in the Fahrenheit 451 book.

".....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." Fire plays a huge role in the book. Every other page describes how things are changed and affected by fire. Everything and everyone in the book are affected by fire beginning with all of the citizens of the city. They live out their daily lives in their homes. Any one of the citizens could decide to read a book, no, even open a book, and they are running the risk of getting the alarm put in on them. The minute those firetrucks arrive at a home every piece of evidence of the knowledge that once was is torn to bits and engulfed in a huge flame that tears up the heart of the citizen to the point of suicide. The fact is, in the book many suicides are caused by the fire that gobbles up the books that the people know and love.

"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." Fire represents the decline of knowledge in our society and how human nature is to destroy the things that are only obtained through work. To obtain knowledge, one must first work for it. They must first read through an entire book. They must first spend some of their precious leisure time working, striving, for the knowledge that produces rich and fruitful rewards. The people in the book are so concerned with destroying all evidence of the books and the traces of knowledge that are around their city. They are taking to fire and loving the fact that more books that are burned, the less work they'll have to do. The more they burn books, the more leisure, fun-filled, idiotic lives they'll have to live. Today in our society we are beginning to strive for machines and things to do everything for us. The fire represents our society throwing away the hard work and rewards that we are being given.

I think the theme of the novel is indeed knowledge and the decline of hard work in our society. Everyone in the book and in the world today is really obsessed with fun and leisure and everything always being fun and exciting. Without hard work, and knowledge, we'll never get anything back from the world that we are living in and I think that is a huge part of the book and what it is trying to say. Fire represents the way that humans are trying to rid themselves of knowledge so that it can't come back. Fire represents the way that humans are destroying every piece of evidence of work and difficulty and unequality.

In closing I really enjoyed the book and I think It's a definite read. It's obvious that fire is huge symbolism in the story and there are thousands of ways that it is used to describe how people may someday become. Fire destroys the knowledge and hard work that we are always going to need to benefit at all from the world that we live in. "I don't talk things sir," said Faber, "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive."