Symbolism

Today in class, we had a project on symbolism based on our independent reading books and were able to work as a team from our personal reading circles. A symbol my team and I chose for Fahrenheit 451 was books because they can represent knowledge/wisdom, awareness, and can be a source of entertainment. To convey these thoughts, we made a book out of stock/construction paper and on the inside of this book we had the word "knowledge," a pair of googly-eyes, and an elephant made of clay. The word "knowledge" is what it is, the googly-eyes represented awareness, and the clay elephant represented entertainment. On the front cover of the book, there were words like life, emotions, truth, imagination, leisure, and inform. These words were placed on the cover because that was what my team and I though books did / effected / triggered / conveyed.

On the outside of the book (in front of it), we had three small protest signs with a book with a banned circle on one, the word "fear" on another, and the word "conformity" on the third. The book with the banned circle on it showed that books were illegal in the story. The word "fear" represented one of the topics/subjects in Fahrenheit 451 because Guy Montag is afraid of being caught and the government is afraid of books because they were worried about what the books might incite. The word "conformity" is important because that was a conflict in Fahrenheit 451 since the government doesn't want anyone to learn from what are inside the books. We believed this because some of Faber's old friends were taken away because they were too aware due to their studies with books.