Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ray BradburyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN: 0345342968
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Fahrenheit 451
Book Review: Exhilirating page-turner, a scary reflection of what our world is becoming. Additional Material a bit disappointing
Summary: 5 Stars
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury has created a world that chillingly seems to reflect our present and near future. In this upside down dystopia, firemen burn books, women congregate with their fake wall (television) families, youth engage in high speed car chases, killing themselves and others, and products are promoted on 200 ft billboards, and hawked by Jesus Christ. In this world where supposedly everyone has everything one wants, no one is truly happy, no one loves anyone, and unhappy people overdose on drugs. No one slows down to smell the flowers, taste the rain, sit by a fire, talk with friends, or just sit and think. No one cares that that the world seems to have been at war for as long as anyone can remember, with fighter jets streaking above their homes everyday. After all, no one has to sacrifice anything; its always someone else's spouse or child that dies.
Guy Montag was a faithful citizen of this world, satisfied with his job of burning books, until he has a chance encounter with his new neighbor, a strange, precocious 16 year old who is wise beyond her years. Clarisse McClellan changes his views of the world dramatically with her strange habits of tasting the rain, gazing at the moon, and asking pointed questions as to why he became a fireman, whether he loves anyone or whether he is happy. An awakened, transformed Montag, after failing to impress and change his shallow and depressed wife and others around him with his new-found wisdom, is discovered, hunted, and is forced to flee the city. He joins a vagabond group of outlaw-professors, who plan to restore the world by imparting the wisdom they have gained by memorizing books.
This is the best novel depicting our future world that I have read. Other books, like Brave New World present a frightening, realistic future, but have poor plot and characterization. On the other hand, books such as 1984 and Animal Farm are thrilling and well told, but really do not reflect our future very well. FAHRENHEIT 451 does both, and does so brilliantly. Apart from depicting a realistic and scary future, Bradbury writes a tight, exciting plot packed with suspense, including fires, chases, murder, suicides, and nuclear war. I could scarcely put the book down, wondering what Montag was going to do next. Although it is but a short story, the characters, including Montag, his shallow but deeply depressed wife Millie, the youthful but insightful Clarisse, the cowardly but wise Faber, and the disillusioned arrogant bully Beatty are engaging and fully realized.
If you have the BALLATINE 50th anniversary edition, the extra material (afterword, coda, and interview) is illuminating, but should be read with a grain of salt. One of the most powerful elements of a great book is that it reaches out to the individual reader, who is able to take it in according to his or her own experiences. The message the reader gets from such books ultimately may not be what the writer intended, but still be fully relevant. Reading the author's views and intentions for the novel can upset this great experience.
The afterward is quite charming, an account of how Bradbury first typed the novel using a paid typewriter (it charged him a dime for 30 minutes, he spent $9.80.) Bradbury also mentions how his characters still visit him, and gives additional insights/alternatives plots, especially a fascinating and rather sad look at how the Beatty, once a mad lover of books, became an arrogant, obnoxious book-burning fireman.
The coda is an amusing diatribe at those who want him to update his works to fit the modern times (include more women, blacks), or, more disturbingly, change his work (without him knowing it!). Such censorship is indeed frightening and should be avoided at all costs. However, one also gets the feeling while reading Bradbury's somewhat smug rant, especially while reading statements such as "the real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make and unmake laws (p.178)" that Bradbury has never been a part of a denigrated minority. One doubts that Bradbury has ever experienced the disadvantages that comes with such membership, which includes having to put up with disturbing elements in books from insults (the 'n' word, savage) to works attesting to prove minority inferiority in a myriad of ways ('proving' a lack of intelligence, propensity towards violence, lack of morals) and finally calls for eugenics to destroy them altogether. Certainly Bradbury does not seem to have reflected on the fact the real world might be a very unfair playing field- with some groups having much more power and ability to make and unmake laws than others.
The interview at the end was the most disturbing for me; Bradbury comes off as out of touch with both his book and the present world. He flatly denies that the US today with its unending and nebulous 'war on terror' reflects the unending war that his own book talked about, a war in which we sit comfortably while other people make sacrifices and other countries suffer. Even worse, Bradbury very naively states "there's no chance for censorship today." (p.184). Tell that to Don Imus, the Palestinians, anti-corporate activists, and those critical of homosexuality, evolution, official versions 9/11 and global warming, and a myriad of other topics.
Sadly, fifty years after his book, Bradbury does not seem to grasp the power of his own book; he does not really seem to appreciate how his vision of a mindless dystopia is rapidly becoming our reality.
Summary of Fahrenheit 451
Internationally acclaimed with more than 5 million copies in print, Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury's classic novel of censorship and defiance, as resonant today as it was when it was first published nearly 50 years ago.Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...
The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden.
Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.
Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think... and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman
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