Fahrenheit 451 Remember

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 for the third time and every time I read it I always find something new. This time was was no exception. As I neared the end this time I came upon an analogy that caught me and I have been pondering it for the past week.

Let me set the tone for you. Montag, the lead character, has just escaped town after years of being a fireman. Not a fireman as you know them though, a fireman who burns books because books make you think and you don't have fun if you think. There is a war starting and Montag is trying to gain knowledge and it is illegal to own books and he was caught with books. He escapes town and finds many people who have done the same. The following day the war starts and huge bombs destroy the city. As the men are looking at the city this dialogue takes place.

Granger looked into the fire. "Phoenix"

"What?"

"There was a silly bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt 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, but we've got one thing the phoenix never had. We know the silly thing we just did. We know all the 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, someday we'll stop making the funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation."

What a great quote, I have been stuck on it for the past week. The main thing that I have been thinking about is the difference between us and the phoenix. After the fire we know what we have done and we can make changes. I can see in my own life how this works and how awesome it is. As we go through the refiners fire we are shaped but what shapes us is the experience and then remembering the choices we made. The next time that we come in contact with this same choice we can look back and remember what we went through and choose more wisely. How great is it that we can remember and because of that we can grow to make right choices?

This is such a great book and if you haven't read it you should. There is a lot more to it then what I have described but it really gets you thinking. I don't know if there is anything I could get out of reading it a fourth time but I am sure that I will end up reading it again later on down the road. As for now I am on to my next book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.