Poem Themes Ethan Flater

The poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” by Adrienne Rich has many different themes that could be thought of while reading this poem. I find that one of these themes is the sense of knowledge and how it can be something that is cherished and something we can learn from. The part where the poem talks about the burning of books and how knowledge is being tossed away and forgotten and how that is a tragedy for society, but then it seems to turn it around and make knowledge something that can take over someone’s life. John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost spent many years studying before he wrote this book and in the end Fredrick Douglas writes a purer form of writing than he did. The two are contrastable people when you try to explain how a man with little education be able to do the same as a man who spent so much of his life in study. It seems like Milton was over taken by his studies and he tried to make everything perfect making the knowledge he sought after something that took over his life and in the end made it empty. This shows a contrast of how knowledge is good in some ways and when it can be taken too fare and lead to madness.

Ethan Flater