ive fire of the firemen. People and culture are so intermingled with my reading selection that I would say they are inseperable. This is based on historical events and probability. In terms of the historical events the most thought provoking was the Nazi book burning that took place after Hitler came to power. These burings took place to eliminate Jewish and outside ingluence on the Aryans, which is precisely what Bradbury demonstrates in this extraordinary piece of literature. Now to the probability portion of my statement, with the censorship by various parties, political and otherwise it is not unlikely that such a catasrophy could happen again, although it could come in the form of simply choking off the undesireable ideas.Symbolism added to the power and overall affect behind this book. The symbols were usually descriptive of something or somebody, such as the Phoenix, and the salamander. Whereas destruction and fire came to be a symbol in the eyes of the reader throughout the novel. Perhaps this novel, written in the early 1950's, spoke out against the future, and spoke out against censorship, but one thing is for sure, we must always attempt to better ourselves with knowledge, and always form our own ideas. If we do, then we will have gotten the message of Ray Bradbury. "There is no knowledge that is not power... And all our lives we must search for power, and in that search, we gain knowledge."(Anonymous)...
