#2 The Perfect Place to Burn Books

Streets filled with earsplitting horns and angry shouts are gone, only to be replaced by the deafening silence filled with nothing but pure white. Through the silence the skyscrapers are buried in snow, like monuments once worshiped for their glory. This is a scene from the apocalyptic disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Unlike most big scale disaster films, instead of running away from the calamity, few of the main characters spend most of their time staying inside the New York Public Library. As horrifyingly boring as it may sound, this movie cannot be complete without the library as its setting, for it holds a certain significance in geography, its character and its implications.

In order to fathom the importance of the New York Public Library’s geographical factor, it is important to understand what kind of a disaster was unleashed in The Day After Tomorrow. In the film, due to Global Warming the polar ice had begun to melt, altering the North Atlantic current. This, in turn, brought abrupt climate changes including a giant tsunami in New York and a snow storm on northern parts of the earth. The storm froze everything in its path, also freezing New York with the flood. This was the start of a new Ice Age for the human race in the film. From here, it is crucial to note that an essential ingredient for large scale movies such as this needs to be bigger and scarier to heighten the apocalypse’s horror. Therefore, it is necessary for the disaster to strike a crowded city with tall buildings and iconic structures, so that the audience can watch their favourite monument fall onto the millions of people running away. In other words, what this American movie needs is a highly populated metropolis in the northern areas of US facing the Atlantic Ocean with a famous tourist attraction. If so, New York City is its perfect fit. The city, with its iconic Statue of Liberty, is currently the most populated city filled with 8.1 million citizens in the US. It is also decorated by skyscrapers that will help the tsunami look even more fearsome in comparison. Fortunately. New York City’s public library happens to be another iconic building in New York, maybe not at the right time but certainly at the right place.

However, one can question why it has to be the New York Public Library out of all the buildings in the city; and that is because of the characteristics the building holds as a library. First of all, in the freezing weather, fire power was the most important factor in survival within the movie. In a modern world without a flood that froze instantaneously, people can easily find heat wherever there is electricity and sunlight, but in this case that was not possible. What those survivors needed were  materials to keep the fireplace burning, and what can be better than books? As the fourth largest library in the world, it is plausible to say that the NYPL had more than enough books to burn. Secondly, with no cellphone service available in the city, the old library building built in the 19^th century had pay phones that gave one of the characters the chance to call for help. Moreover, with its old architecture design, unlike many edifices in the metropolis, it does not have walls made out of windows that loses heat or shatter easily compared to a thick stone wall. In other words, NYPL is a place that has fuel, a phone that works and protection from the cold – all three in one monumental building.

It is clear that the New York Public Building has the suitable geographical element and characteristics, but an even important factor to make this building significant is what it represents. One can say that library has records of the past, present and future of mankind. It tells the history of civilizations; about how they have constantly desired for more and developed as a result. Nevertheless, by scrutinizing the planet for their infinite greed, in the end they brought destruction upon themselves. Thus, in order to save their lives in this man-made catastrophe, they choose to burn the record of knowledge that men acquired through sacrificing the planet. This plays an ironic role in the movie. Men destroying their own history to have a future. In other words, the books in NYPL represents the greed of human beings, while the ritual of burning the books represents what those beings need to do to have a future – they need to put a stop to their selfish acts. It is time for them to start thinking of a way to coexist with the planet. This is whatThe Day After Tomorrow is trying to express to the audience by choosing a library among all the beautiful architectures in the city of New York.

In the motion picture, The Day After Tomorrow, the New York Public Library is not just a place to search for books but a perfect building in the right place, with the right characteristics and with the right significance to start and finish a story. The New York Public Library is no more just a place to read books but burn them – burn them into one’s memory. Read the mistakes to create a better future. It is now time to choose the first book to burn.