The Living Libraries In Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'

Fahrenheit 451 Rough Draft The living libraries in ‘Fahrenheit 451’ are preserving their knowledge by remembering the books by photographic memory. It’s important that they do this to be able to pass on their knowledge to each generation in hopes that their children will too. Knowledge is important for the future so that we don’t continue to make these same mistakes again.

Prior to the book, Granger and the others do this (remembering the books) to be able to freely speak about the importance of events and what it was like to go through them. “We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and national law, Bryon, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it’s here” (Bradbury, 145) This can show how these books are a part of them although

However, “Do you really think they’ll listen” (Bradbury, 146) Montag says this because in the middle of the book he reads a poem to Mildred’s friends. Although they listened to him they didn’t understand what he was saying and started to break down. This is also mainly because there can be a whole crowd of people there when you’re speaking about something , but who are the ones listening and hearing you out. Moreover, ties into the next excerpt from the book, “ If not, we’ll just have to wait. We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come around in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.” (Bradbury, 146) Granger says this in response to Montag’s question, his children or children in general will be carrying the generation. Soon those children will have people who will listen to them and ask them questions about the world, especially the people who are confused/lost and would like to know more. Once that happens they will be able to have a society of individuality where people have their own set of morals and not just following standards placed. Be able to be creative and think outside of what they were originally taught. Undoubtedly this will give people

“There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing over and over, …” (Bradbury, 156) Granger brings this up to Montag to explain how the bird just continued to do the same thing again without it even being aware of it, because the bird knows that he will be able to be born again. Just so he can make the same mistakes again, and again, and again. The bird teaches how without understanding what we are doing wrong we will continue to make these same faults again. However, he also says “...but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.” (Bradbury, 156) Furthermore, the more we are able to pass on our history to each generation that remembers it, the more people will know what happened and comprehend the past events to make sure it doesn’t happen