Fire is at the heart of The Librarian of Burned Books, with its relevance being alluded to directly in the title. It is most often used as a symbol of literal and figurative destruction. The first hint of this is early in Althea’s story, when she first arrives in Germany and encounters a mob celebrating Hitler’s rise to power: “Althea saw the torchlight first. She froze, paralyzed, unsure if this was an unruly mob or an organized celebration” (48). Although she quickly overcomes her fear and joins the festivities, this moment of ambiguity foreshadows the duality and uncertainty she struggles with throughout the novel. Later, this motif appears when the resistance meeting is broken up by the announcement, “The Reichstag is on fire” (153). Here, the flames become a symbol of dissolution and fear.

Later in the story, fire plays a very central and violent role at the cataclysmic book burnings, a call to action led by Joseph Goebbels. Although it is a source of literal destruction, it also acts on a metaphorical level as the destroyer of enlightenment, community, and hope. Althea, as one whose identity is intrinsically tied up with books, takes the event particularly hard. The novel conveys the magnitude of the atrocity by saying, “It was not just a few books, not just a symbolic fire.