Malamud writes about a boy, well, a man who is jobless and mooching off of his sister and dad. This man, George, has no high school diploma, so finding a job is more difficult than ever. When prompted the question, “What are you doin’ in the day now?”(Malamud, 197) George, ashamed for being jobless, lies about reading a large sum of books to pick up his education. It is this very lie that connects the two books, in the sense of social themes. In Bradbury’s novel, the social …show more content…
The themes can be as vague as aforementioned, but when one digs deeper, one will find contrasting ideas. The protagonist in Bradbury’s work does not feel the pressure of social stigmatism towards books, as George in A Summer’s Reading does. Montag is bound by law to burn books, else he be treated as a criminal, or a psychopath. George in Malamud’s short story is not told he cannot read by law, it is only the stigma of society towards books combined with his laziness that keeps him from written text. George, in this way, illustrates an assumed majority of modern social individuals. He is slothful-that is, he is lazy and feels no responsibility to find a job, yet has the audacity to feel ashamed for himself- and does not grasp that his education is the biggest factor. Even reading a few fictional works could give him a bit of insight or a whole new perspective to change his life for