Censorship and Books

"Where they have burned books, 

they will end in burning human beings" 

Heinrich Heine

A world without books would be quite dismal and boring...Libraries and bookstores would be non-existent. The shelves in my dorm and at home would be filled with meaningless trinkets, not intriguing books. The creativity and imagination of the world would be gone. The fantasy worlds only found in books would be lost, and generations growing up in such a world would be stone cold. I would personally miss books, even the textbooks used in classrooms. There is so much knowledge out there that a single person would never be able to obtain it all and teach others within their lifetime. Books offer a place of escape--when having a bad day, I can read a book, get lost in it, and never remember why I was upset in the first place. Books let my imagination run rampant trying to picture the scenery, characters, and actions within their pages.

We metaphorically burn books when we choose to watch TV show or movie based on a book rather than reading the book. We justify ourselves by saying, "Oh, well it's so much quicker and more fun to watch the movie than read the book." Yes, it's quicker to watch a movie of a 1,000 page book. But more fun? Eh, not so much. Watching only the movie restricts our imagination to visualizing the characters as they are portrayed. It's nice to have a "tangible" representation of the world we have in books, but there is so much limitation when shoving a single large book, or long book series into a 1.5 hour movie. Important facts or characters, interesting scenes, or controversial themes may be cut out of the movie just to make it "appropriate" and fill the time constraint. I remember reading the Guardians of Ga'Hoole book series in middle school for fun, and absolutely LOVED it. Recently, though, it was made into a very disappointing movie because important scenes were cut out or changed, especially when it came to the battle scenes--the book was gruesome in explaining them, but there were no feathers or blood flying around in the movie.

Books--by themselves, without words are ideas--are harmless. The words and ideas found hidden or apparent within the pages of the book are what most dangerous. Ideas in books have the power to change lives, start wars, influence morals. Kill the book, kill the man who wrote the book, but its ideas will live on. Ideas cannot be destroyed by a simple flame.

"...but he who destroys a good book, 

kills reason itself, kills the image of God..."