Burning of paper

Adrienne Rich’s poem The Burning of Paper Instead of Children goes over the situation where the next door neighbor’s son burns a math book after school and how the son was punished harshly for doing so. The neighbor criticizes his son as being just as bad as Hitler for doing so well Rich takes a different perspective. The main theme that appears in the poem for me is the idea of living life without knowledge of books. Rich first brings in the MELANCOLIA to support the theme. The MELANCOLIA is interpreted as someone who spends all his time working and reading that he loses himself in endless work and loses out on life. Someone who spends his whole life by the book will learn nothing if they never experience anything first hand. She explains that famous writers like Frederick Douglas wrote “purer” than Milton, who had study his whole life, because he wrote from experience and life. What I get from this poem is that life can’t be mapped out for you by a book and that trying to live by a book is foolish.