The classic
sciencenovel bytells of a dystopian society in which firemen burn books
instead of putting out fires. Books have been officially made obsolete and declared illegal. A
fireman named Guy Montag questions his role and secretly begins to hoard books saved from the
fires. After he is found out and forced to flee into the wilderness, he locates an exiled group
of drifters led by Granger.
The drifters have all
memorized books that are particularly meaningful to them with the vision of safeguarding the
literature of the past. As the drifters move downriver, bombers appear and wipe out the city
from which Montag has just fled.
Granger tells them the
story of the phoenix that burns itself up and then resurrects from its own ashes as a comparison
to the society that has just been destroyed. He says that "it looks like we're doing the
same thing, over and over. . . ." In other words, society continues to destroy itself and
then rebuild. However, Granger then adds that humankind has "one damn thing the phoenix
never had." Humanity can remember what it has done and hopefully someday "stop making
the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them." So Granger is hopeful that
the books they are memorizing will help them remember humanity's mistakes and somehow prevent
them in the future. This would stop the endless cycle of destruction symbolized by the
phoenix.
No comments:
Post a Comment