FAHRENHEIT 451 by RAY BRADBURY
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 23, 2010
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Ray Bradbury published this novel in 1953 after WWII. The world was entering the “Cold War” period between the West, mainly the United States and capitalism, and the East, the Soviet Union and communism. It was not a shooting war as much as it was a period of massive build up of military arsenals on both sides with the threat of worldwide nuclear confrontation and WWIII.
It was in this climate that Bradbury wrote his book thinking, as it turned out correctly, that the world was descending into a forty year stalemate in which irrationality might take over with someone setting off a nuclear holocaust.
He thought, and again I say correctly, that Americans, indeed, citizens of the world were so tuned into their own tastes and compunctions that they were oblivious to any possible upset of this tradition.
The novel presents a future American society that is into senseless self-indulgence and oblivious to the fact that critical thought and book reading is outlawed. That is the central theme of the book, and the reason it was written – to shock the reading audience awake to the dangers or possible dangers in the future if they took their liberty and pursuit of happiness for granted.
THE CHARACTERS
Guy Montag is a fireman, firemen are trained to put out fires and protect material (i.e., “things”) combustibles, whereas the police are trained to serve and protect and control personal combustibles (i.e., “people”).
The number “451 degrees Fahrenheit” refers to the temperature at which book paper will burn.
Nothing is straightforward in this novel so you have to be on the alert. For example, Guy Montag burns books instead of protecting books from being burned. If you happen to have read “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess you will see he has the criminals becoming the police to dramatize his point of the evolution of corruption.
“Fahrenheit 451”) is known as a dystopian novel, which is a pessimistic view of the future, whereas the famous novel of Sir Thomas More “Utopia” is an optimistic view of an ideal society. .
Bradbury wrote this book as the Cold War and threatening conflict with Soviet Union was heating up. What he feared most, and what he was writing about in this science fiction treatment of the idea was the danger of censorship.
He was saying in 1953 that television was destroying interest in reading, in literature, in ideas, and by doing so it was analogous to “burning books.” He could see how the State was manipulating the masses to conform to its dictates, and he wasn’t eliminating the United States from this comparison.
In this Information Age, a similar threat is upon us with the symbolic burning of books by the sheer volume of information which is often silly, redundant, inconsequential, repetitive and simply irrelevant. Often it promotes horror stories with the drumbeat of the last days of cable news programs. These programs discourage rational engagement, problem solving, creative thinking, which is dealing with what is not known but can be found out, spinning instead around the fabric of critical thinking, which only deals with what is known, discouraging embracing what is not known.
We have become a society imprisoned in crisis management solving problems in the main that we have created by our failure to anticipate and deal with issues before they become of a crisis magnitude. We stay the same miss the changes and let the future up for grabs. This may sound like a digression but it is precisely what Bradbury was trying to communicate. He anticipated the era of the electronic universe with Facebook, texting, and all the rest while the world collapses into forward inertia.
THE PLOT.
Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a time much like the 1990s when this entire electronic mumble jumble was being created. The unspecified time is one in which pleasure is the diet of choice, making money, and looking down on intellectuals while losing self-control and surrendering to self-indulgent.
America is out of control. Crime is rampant. Teenagers do as they please without consequences. They crash cars into people. And fireman for the hell of it having nothing to do at fire stations except set their mechanical hounds to hunt animals and then watch them die.
Anyone caught reading a book is sent to an asylum while firemen burn the books.
Then there is Clarisse McClellan who Montag meets. Clarisse is the exact opposite of the fireman. He is a free thinker, an idealist, who questions the status quo. He asks why. Such a man can’t survive. He is hit by a car and killed.
Montag’s wife, Mildred, overdoses. The medics treat her so inhumanly that the fireman starts to rethink and reevaluate his lot in life.
Montag accidentally comes across a book and reads a line, “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” This prompts him to steal the book. The owner of the books burns herself alive rather than leave her books when they catch fire. This disturbs Montag.
Here you see his awareness is surfacing from the shock of his wife and then the old lady with all her book who chose martyrdom to giving them up.
He takes sick leave, fights with his superiors and wife who still remained programmed in the repressive system. Montag goes on to steal many books.
Then there is Faber, the English professor, who Montag seeks. Montag learns from the books they discuss about life, literature, and how books play a part in explaining human existence.
Eventually, Montag’s fire captain Beatty goes to his house to burn his books, claiming he knew all along about his secret reading. Montag flees to Faber’s house, and by this time you’re well into the book. The rest is a surprise and so I’ll leave it at that.
“Fahrenheit 451” is as relevant to day as it was more than a half century ago. Read it and weep.
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