Download closely reading on the burning of books

On the Burning of Books
Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956] was a major and highly influential
German poet, playwright, theater director and songwriter.
Brecht fled Germany in 1933, when Hitler assumed power. A
number of Brecht's poems were written from the perspective
of a man who sees his country becoming increasingly fascist,
xenophobic and militaristic. For instance this one about Nazi
book burnings orchestrated by propaganda-meister Joseph
Goebbels. The Nazis burned the books of writers they
considered to be "decadent," including those of Thomas
Mann, Ernest Hemingway and even Helen Keller. Also among
the books burned were those of the great German-Jewish
poet Heinrich Heine, who in his 1820-1821 play Almansor
accurately predicted, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt,
verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn
books, they will also ultimately burn people.")
On the Burning of Books
What words stood out as significant?
DENOTATION (dictionary meaning – which
ones did you look up?)
CONOTATION (“emotionally charged”
meaning)
On the Burning of Books
What did you think the TONE of the poem was
(speaker’s ATTITUDE toward the subject)?
What word(s) in the poem gave you this
impression?
What specific word(s) would you use to describe
the tone?
On the Burning of Books
What do you think the “message” or
central idea of the poem is? Explain why
you think so by using specific phrases or
lines from the poem to support your
answer.
On the Burning of Books
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What literary elements or devices did you
identify?
Metaphor
Symbol
Alternate Persona (imagined character of the
speaker)
Metonymy (a figure of speech in which a
thing or concept is called not by its own
name but rather by the name of something
associated in meaning with that thing or
concept.)