(Photo provided) Franklin Central High School freshman RJ Freeman’s “Letters About Literature” contest submission was selected. The contest is held through the Indiana State Library, and selected submissions are published in the Library of Congress. Freeman’s essay was a letter to author Ray Bradbury about similarities between characters in his book, ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ and real people today.
By HANNAH GUNNELL
One Franklin Central High School freshman’s e-learning assignment has been selected to be published in the Library of Congress.
In January, Language Arts teacher Lisa Laker tasked her creative writing students with participating in the Indiana State Library’s “Letters About Literature” contest anthology. Those who are selected get their participating letter published in the Library of Congress.
“What you had to do for it was write a letter to an author, dead or alive, about how their book impacted you and the way you look at the world,” said RJ Freeman, the freshman whose essay was selected. “You could write about how a book made you view people differently or how they acted, or companies, or something like that.”
Freeman choose to write to Ray Bradbury about how his book, “Fahrenheit 451,” predicted certain ways people behave today.
“I didn’t know at first what else to write about,’ he said. ‘I had seen trailers for [horror movie] ‘Terrifier 3’ when I should’ve been doing other work. I realized people are going to movie theaters to watch really messed up content, and that’s portrayed in ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ In that [book], people are cheering for all sorts of violence and such. It shows how the book predicted people become desensitized to mature content such as violent scenes, adult content, all that. That inspired me to write the essay about Fahrenheit 451.”
Freeman’s essay included examples such as how the protagonist of the book realized that those around him don’t think for themselves anymore, he said. There’s a presidential election where those chosen are picked on appearance rather than quality traits, and even an individual killed on national television, but nobody seems to care.
“Looking past the violence kind of translates to real life because, like what I said with the Terrifyer 3 movie,” Freeman said. “It’s gore and violence and people flooding movie theaters to go see it. People throw up and nobody cares. They were becoming desensitized to people doing things and focusing more on fitting in and not caring about how disgusting the stuff was, just doing it because they thought it’d be fun.”
The assignment was given in January. Freeman found out his essay was selected upon returning to school from Spring Break — Mrs. Laker told him to check his email.
“I read the email and said, ‘Oh, shoot, that’s crazy!’” Freeman said. “I couldn’t believe it. [My teacher] couldn’t either. I think she’d only had one other teacher picked in her 30 years of teaching.”
This is Freeman’s first time being published.
“At first I couldn’t really believe it for a minute, and I didn’t say anything to anyone because I was nervous about it, but I ended up talking to my mom about it — I was going to surprise her but she’d already seen it on Facebook — and then I talked to a couple of my friends,” he said. “My friend Liam texted me a screenshot and said, ‘What’s this bro?’ He said he found it cool, and some of my other friends did too. It’s nice to hear that because it’s such a cool thing to know I’m published in the Library of Congress. It’s a cool little fun fact that will help me play two truths and a lie. It’s cool to know I’m part of something like that.”
