Burning a Book

Fire is a complex symbol both in its presence and absence within “Burning a Book.” Fire is first implicitly introduced in the “glow” (Line 2) of the pages discussed from the onset of Stanza 1. This imagery, paired with the title of the poem itself, indicate the presence of fire, highlighting its destructive qualities as the speaker describes a physical book burning to ash. However, Stafford goes beyond this traditional symbolism of fire as destructive, complicating the societal justifications of book burning by showing that it is not the great equalizer.

The last line of Stanza 1 reveals that “a few charred words” (Line 8) remain after the book has been burned. Fire did not purify society of false ideologies, but rather, left a trace of them in the present. Here, Stafford uses fire as a symbol of intensity, exemplifying the clash of opposing viewpoints.

The absence of fire is also an important symbol throughout the poem. In Line 18, Stafford writes that “ignorance can dance in the absence of fire” (Line 17), disheartened by the fact that, when books are not being burned, that means that no one is reading nor writing them. Stafford contends that book burning is all together more productive than silence because it means that humanity is interacting with texts of diverse perspectives, pursuing knowledge by reading texts within and outside of their own ideological comfort zones, even if that means they wish to destroy the books afterward.