Effects Of Book Burning In Fahrenheit 451

In Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian fiction novel written by Ray Bradbury, the concept of book burning is manifested to a great extent. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman whose primary job is to burn books and start fires, rather than prevent them. This is because books are illegal in the world presented in Fahrenheit 451. The supposed reason for this is to restrict the thoughts and thinking of everyone and limit their questioning. Book burning is not something contemporary but dates back to hundreds of years ago. Numerous incidents have occurred where, books, manuscripts, sacred texts and pieces of writing were burned. From Emperor Qin Shi Huang 's order in 213 BC that all books of philosophy and history from anywhere other than Qin province in China be burned to Nazi’s burning all “un-German” books in 1933; book burning has occurred in all ways and forms. However, there is a common cause of most of the book burning, which is censorship. Moreover, a particularly fascinating incident regarding book burning is the recent burning of the holy book of Islam, the Quran by Terry Jones.

In March 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center located in Gainesville, Florida, burned 200 copies of the Quran. At first, his motives were unknown, but later that month he announced that this was just the beginning, and he would burn another 2,998 copies of the Quran- one for every victim of the 2001 attacks on US soil. Naturally, this caused outrage