Burning Books

Scene 1

An English lecturer's office, full of books and papers.  GAO is on a chair sorting out literature on his desk.  A knock on the door.

gao:

come in!

Enter San.

san:

Gao.

GAO:

San.

SAN:

Have you made a decision?

GAO:

Yes.

SAN:

Then what are you going to do?

GAO:

I'm going to put all my writings in a big pile outside, light a match and walk away.

SAN:

Gao, really?, you're prepared to do that?

GAO:

Yes, San, it has not been easy to come to that conclusion but I have finally decided.

SAN:

You're not going to stand up for not just you but all English lecturers that have invested their lives to defend the basic principles of their, your, subject?

GAO:

No, there will be no protest.  When the police arrive there will be nothing condemning me to prison.

SAN:

Gao, that's playing straight into their hands, that's what they want.  They need people like you so they can justify what they are doing.  You'll just be another cog in their big wheel spinning uselessly out of control.

GAO:

I do not need the speech of exhaustion.  I have enough of it.

SAN:

What will be next?  Censorship of the body?

GAO:

You are frantic with the political, have you failed to notice history?  You should know that governments like these do not last long even if they last intensely.  The next few years will be rough but there will be a time when I can write again.  I will write about all of this and I will because I will not forget about it.

san:

Memory is your comfort, your reason?  It seems cowardly.

gao:

I can help my students better from my office then in prison.  I hate what I must do, but it is the way that I believe is right.  With all of my heartfelt writings I have no idea how long destroying it all would take.  You say it's cowardly, I say that it is monstrous; monstrous as if I was killing my own children for the sake of myself.  Unlike children my papers can be rewritten from memory.  The choices our department are facing are hard and how we negotiate these difficulties will determine the character of humanity.  As long as I am able to teach I can count myself as serving humanity the best I can.  Is that not noble enough?

san:

I can hardly disagree.  It is noble, but it is also squalid.

Scene 2

In a park.  GAO is with MIA.

mia:

But why?

GAO:

Because it is what I'm good at.

MIA:

You're good at lots of things.  You're just doing it to irritate my dad.  You know he won't like it.

GAO:

If I want to be an English Lecturer I don't see why your father has to get in the way.

MIA:

Because it's not a stable time to be an English Lecturer.

GAO:

It's about what I write isn't it?

MIA:

You can still write as a hobby.

GAO:

I think I could be published.

MIA:

It's nice that you write but I wouldn't advise you to become a full time writer.

GAO:

Who are you to advise me on anything?

MIA:

I thought you respected me more than that.  You're so stubborn but you don't seem to understand our current climate.  I thought you were cleverer than that.  Do you listen to me or do I have to write everything I say down in a book before you can digest it?

GAO:

I don't see how we can carry on in this way.  You clearly disregard my basic needs and you care nothing of my wants.

MIA:

I have been so good to you or have you forgotten?  You are the selfish one that I have to share with Cervantes, Rabelais and Dickens; the whole history of Literature.  God I wish it could be all swept away with only the present remaining.  To live with one tense.  There!  Do you understand?  You live as a backwater writer without me.  I will not be involved with the waste of a fine mind.

GAO:

'Milk, warm from being untouched, drowns the moth in search of light'.  That's what you are.  I'm glad this aspect of your personality has finally surfaced.  Because it is everything I hate.

Scene 3

GAO stands in front of a pile of books.

GAO:

When I knew that the actions of my inner mental mind could be drawn out and placed inside an object I knew that I had to be some kind of artist.  I always wrote in private and in secrecy because my parents would actively discourage me in their words: 'Making a cult of my personality'.  I felt that I had to be explored.  The outline of the world had to fit with the colours I saw and in doing so found that it was never a perfect match.  I found inconsistencies and I tried to correct them in my own way, hoping that the physical world would follow suit.  Not everyone can have a Utopian world; utopias are created with one type of personality considered.  Perhaps I have always been the wrong type and I struggle to survive anyway I can.  I believe that discovering hope is vitally important.  That is normally the theme of my writings, and if someone can find hope in what I have written than I take enormous pleasure in that.  I know it will take me a week to burn these books and I will have to watch as I slowly become acceptable and law-abiding to my government.  It will be the longest week of my life and possibly the saddest.  Nobody want to see their own name up in flames, erased from history, especially by their own hands.  I will note in my mind the feeling of resignation and dutiful mourning that accompanies the sanitizing fire, so I can tell people in the future what happened here and what I was forced to do.  For now all I can do is remember.

GAO lights a match.  Blackout.





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