Fahrenheit 451 Review
Ray Bradbury's books make for immediate, mesmerizing, entirely compulsive reading. His prose is electrifying in its use of poetic metaphor and dramatic syntax. The reader is instantly plunged into an alien culture, or a terrifying future, and is not really released even after the last page is turned.
I had been postponing reading this novel for years. I am, after all, a confirmed bibliophile. Reading a novel with a plot involving the burning of books would, I kept telling myself, be too traumatic for me.
I finally decided to wade in.
Need I say that I only put the book down when I absolutely had to, when reality intruded? The novel carried me along on its relentless wave of narrative. Of course, I tried not to picture the books burning as I read, but Bradbury wouldn't let me. Not when he was describing them as living creatures, dying, their pigeon wings flapping.... The fact that I managed to endure this at all is a real tribute to the greatness of his writing.
The characters are indelibly imprinted on my brain. The most compelling, of course, is the protagonist, Montag. Equally compelling are Faber, who is obviously Montag's alter ego, and the numinous Clarisse. She is the one who first awakens Montag to the futility of denying his own soul, the stirrings of thought and penetrating questions that reading invariably arouses. The most tragic character is Beatty, who struggles hard against his love of books, in his work as chief fireman. This struggle culminates in a final, ironic conflagration. Montag's wife, Mildred, is to be pitied, since she is unable to acknowledge her emptiness, her consuming loneliness. She pushes away the power and beauty to be found in books. She refuses to come out of denial, preferring `the family', a banal cast of characters she endlessly watches on the living room `wall-to-wall TV', in order to anesthetize the deepest longings of her soul.
As I read, I became aware of a deeper sense of discomfort, underneath that elicited by the burning of books. Due to my own life experiences, I, along with this disturbed society, had been unconsciously longing for a world in which no one would ever get his or her feelings hurt - a world where everyone's rights would be respected, especially those of minorities.
Bradbury gave me a sobering look at such a world, and it was absolutely terrifying. It was "American Idol" gone wild, a world in which people no longer thought, felt, or even communicated on a soul level with other human beings. Instead, they spent all their time being `happy', through mindless, ongoing entertainment.
I realized that I didn't want to live in such a world; it would mean the total annihilation of what makes us most deeply human - the ability to dream, to wonder, to ponder the deep truths of life.
Books and the questions they raise are incompatible with living in a world where nobody would offend anyone else. Books disturb, probe, anger and challenge. Books are flawed at times, due to their authors' all-too-human penchant for furthering their own pet theories, however twisted they might seem to a reader. Books can make us squirm, for they can force us to face the unwanted realities we try to bury.
There is still a part of me that thinks that books such as "Mein Kampf" should be burned, or at least, allowed to expire by going, and staying, out of print. The Marquis de Sade also comes to mind as an author of books with a markedly offensive subject matter. Then there's Anais Nin. One of her books chronicles the incestuous relationship she had with her father...
The problem is, where do you draw the line? Who decides which books merit extinction?
I don't have a final, satisfactory answer.
And so I am left feeling restless and slightly depressed, although I'm glad to have read the book, nevertheless. It has caused me to ponder what I really and truly believe regarding the banning of books, and their potentially harmful influences.
Yet another uncomfortable element of the plot is Montag's desperate, evil act toward the end of the novel. I suppose it is inevitable, however. It is indeed immoral, but then, so is the entire, nihilistic society he is a part of. It is the act of a man who has turned on a symbol of that society, and so, turned on himself, in a sense, in order to be reborn as a new man, a man who thinks and feels, even if doing so causes him some measure of unhappiness. This act could, itself, be considered a harmful influence on a reader, since Montag evades punishment. Yet, as an act of rebellion, of a misplaced sort of justice, it is totally fitting. Therein lies "the treason of the artist", as Ursula K. LeGuin puts it. For the artist makes meaning out of pain, suffering, and tragedy. This is also part of the value to be found in books.
The symbol of rebirth is ubiquitous in the novel. At one point, the myth of the Phoenix is mentioned. Ironically, civilization is being reborn out of the very fire it has used to destroy the very objects that had given it meaning - books.
By the end of the novel, groups of people have quietly begun the reconstruction, the return to reading. It is a movement that is slowly gathering momentum. Civilization, suggests Bradbury, as Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz" was to do years later, is constantly rising from the ashes of every Dark Age in order to reinvent itself.
So I know that I will be re-reading this book sometime in the near future, as I intend to do with Miller's. Both are books that apparently dwell on despair, only to end with a feeling of hope.
Bradbury has once again sparked my imagination and tickled my intellect. He also refuses to let me forget his incredible take on a future that may or may not turn out to become all too real.
Fahrenheit 451 Overview
A not-too-distant future where happiness is allocated on a TV screen, where individuals and scholars are outcasts and where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Montag, trained by the state to be a destroyer, throws away his can of kerosene and begins to read a book.
Fahrenheit 451 Specifications
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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Customer Reviews
There must be something in books - Kat @ FantasyLiterature.com -
Books are dangerous. They're full of ideas that make people think about the world, feel passion, and perhaps act out. That's not good for society; it causes conflict, uprising, and interference with the status quo. People who read and think scare people who don't, so most citizens have happily given up the right to decide what to think about and now let the government fill their brains with constant loud mindless entertainment. This managed input has equalized society; nobody feels inferior to anyone else and there's no conflict anymore. Dull minds, constant entertainment, and conformity make society run smoothly.
Guy Montag works as a fireman. He burns books at night while his wife sits in her parlor and listens to inane media shows at high volume. But Clarice, the teenager next door, is different. Her family sits around and talks. They discuss things and they laugh with each other. Guy wonders what they talk about as he watches his wife talk to the strangers on TV and pop sleeping pills...
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 presents a possible frightening future in which intellectual pursuits and nonconformity are deemed dangerous and subversive. It's been more than half a century since Fahrenheit 451 was published and we've seen censorship laws actually become looser over the years and the advent of the internet has brought on the current "information age." But that doesn't make Fahrenheit 451 irrelevant because it's about much more than literary censorship. It's about freedom of speech and individual rights. It's about thinking for ourselves and what might happen if we let the government tell us what we can see, hear, or own.
Fahrenheit 451 resonates with me on so many levels. First of all, it's just superbly written. I love Bradbury's intense style which translates especially well on Blackstone Audio's version read by Christopher Hurt (sample). Here he describes the show that Mrs Montag watches all day:
A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were almost shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of concussion. When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never -- quite -- touched -- bottom -- never -- never -- quite -- no not quite -- touched -- bottom ... and you fell so fast you didn't touch the sides either... never... quite... touched... anything.
The thunder faded. The music died.
"There," said Mildred. And it was indeed remarkable. Something had happened. Even though the people in the walls of the room had barely moved, and nothing had really been settled, you had the impression that someone had turned on a washing-machine or sucked you up in a gigantic vacuum. You drowned in music and pure cacophony. He came out of the room sweating and on the point of collapse. Behind him, Mildred sat in her chair and the voices went on again...
Second, I share Bradbury's ardent passion for knowledge and learning. The thought of lost information, burned books, mindless entertainment, meaningless small-talk, conformity, and intellectual malaise makes my stomach twist. I don't believe that we're in danger of the anti-intellectualism that Bradbury posits, but still his ideas get me riled up.
Third, I'll admit that I'm a rebel at heart. While I recognize that obeying laws and paying taxes are a necessary part of living in a well-functioning society, I feel mostly distrustful and suspicious when the government increases taxes, takes over more functions in society, tells us what to believe, and tries to revoke constitutional freedoms. In this context, Bradbury's possible future doesn't seem so impossible anymore.
I'm pleased that my school district assigns Fahrenheit 451 in its middle-school curriculum, though I find it a bit ironic that some publishers have edited the language to make it more "suitable" for teenagers.
"I hate a Roman named Status Quo!" - Zeek - Lancaster, PA USA
This book is all about one man's struggle against the status quo- even more frightening for him because he lives in a world where firemen are not the rescuers but the fire starters. They rush to houses not to put out fires but to burn them, and only those that hold the most heinous crimes against the state- books.
Guy Montag did his duty as a fireman till one day a girl- a free thinker- held a dandelion under his chin and woke him up.
His world turned upside down he made a stand and then had to run for his life- watched all the while by inhabitants of the city glued to their wall tv sets, numbed and dumbed down by the very thing that holds them enthralled.
Yet, Montag makes his escape, becoming more important than he ever could have realized while his world disintegrates around him- literally.
I read Fahrenheit 451 ages ago and it was fun to revisit it with older eyes. I thought I remembered this as a dystopian rant against state run government- perhaps exacerbated by a documentary borrowing the titled not long ago- but really its not.
This little tale is all about the dumbing down of the human soul, when we give up reading and communicating on a deeper level to reality shows, texting and abridged stories. (yeah, yeah, texting and reality shows weren't around when Bradbury wrote the book- but then, how prophetic is THAT, because that's exactly eventual outcome he saw coming! Eerily prophetic, really.)
I had also forgotten how much I love Bradbury's use of cadence, similes and how spare his writing feels- even though it's not. Very emotive.
It makes me sad that kids may miss this because they can't be bothered to sit down and read book over the media shouting such old fashioned behavior down. "Like butterflies puzzled by Autumn" they will one day wake up and not understand.
It makes me sad indeed.
Quick shipping - great condition - bp -
The book arrived very quickly and was in great condition. Not a whole lot to say about a book but happy with everything!
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 02, 2010 22:13:04
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