F451 Assignment #6

"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books...There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe into one garment for us" (Bradbury 83). The fact that books were being burned every single day in this society was not what was harming the citizens, the loss of history and knowledge to be learned through reading these books is what caused these people to be missing out. Things that were once almost second nature to people due to how familiar they had become with certain texts and authors were now completely lost, leaving nothing more than the emptiness inside and love of the parlor walls as the factors that wove all people together in the garment of life. Without these factors it had become impossible for people to learn from eachother and grow in all aspects of life: "Those who don't build must burn" (Bradbury 89). Nothing in Montag's world was building anymore because the main building blocks, books, were completely melting away and disappearing from society. Because of this, people were becoming more and more useless. They were no longer learning or building, therefore they had no choice but to slowly burn out and be forgotten.