Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree First Half

                While reading Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, I found myself wondering how I would’ve felt about the book burnings had it been my culture. Initially, I couldn’t understand what was so horrible about that day. Although I do not condone book burnings as I am a lover of books, I found it to be strange that so many of Ali’s characters were so heartbroken over this act. To them, it was as if a part of them had been taken away so that the burnings felt personal to every Islamic person. The more I thought about it however, the more I began to understand the root of why the book burnings were such a heinous act.

                To come to the realization of why the Hudayl family was so devastated over the destruction of their culture, I began to think about the novel 1984 by George Orwell. In this novel, the government takes away all form of expression, freedom, or thought from the ordinary people. They use something called “Newspeak” to eliminate the use of free thought in the masses. I realized how when Cisneros burned the Muslim’s books, he was essentially committing the same act of removing free thought as Big Brother had in 1984. To burn the Islamic books, Cisneros was trying to take away the basic right of freedom away from the Muslims. Once he took away their freedom, they were his to control.

                The burning of Muslim books was to take away their culture and history. But Cisneros not only wanted to rob them of their past, but take away everything that made them who they were. If he robbed them of their culture, he was taking away their rights and making them subservient to the Catholics. While I initially didn’t understand what an atrocious crime this was, I began to realize that to the Hudayl family, the book burning signified the end to their freedom.