A great deal of anxious thought went into choosing the book for this essay. I work in the LCCC Bookstore and believe I was born loving books and longing to own them despite having dyslexia.
Fahrenheit 451 was one of the first adult books I ever read as a teenager and I had to read it again, afraid that I may not have understood it then. The story of a fireman who burns books is just as powerful today as it was 30-plus years ago. Its themes of social and governmental control of media and thought are more relevant today than ever. Ray Bradbury himself in the Coda to the 50th Anniversary edition to Fahrenheit 451 says: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And there is a world full of people running about with lit matches.”
I can’t say for certain that this book led me to work with books; I think I was born to that. However, this book certainly led me to other books that questioned the status quo and that looked beyond the everyday. And I’m very proud of that, and of selling those same books to our students.
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Peggy,
ReplyDeleteThis book has been in my life since I first read it in 1993. The final scene, where Guy Montag joins the book people who survey the devastated present and look to the task of rebuilding the future with books they have committed to memory, symbolizes for me the whole notion of books as the protectors and guardians of a civilization's greatest ideas.
Kevin Hoskinson