By Ray Bradbury
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
The premise of this story is utterly abhorrent to those of us who love reading. In his classic dystopian novel, American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) created a world in which books are illegal and teams of ‘firemen’ are dispatched by the authorities to burn illicit copies discovered in the possession of clandestine readers. For good measure, they also incinerate the houses in which they are found.
A relatively short book (my 50th anniversary edition came in at 119 pages, including the author’s Introduction and Afterword), Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unspecified time in the future when people no longer appreciate nature, spend time alone or think for themselves. Rather, they watch endless hours of TV on sets that fill their walls, drive at ridiculously high speeds in their vehicles and listen to ‘Seashell Radio’ through earbud headphones. Familiar?
Its protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman living in a futuristic conurbation with his wife Mildred. He’s content to carry out his professional book-burning duties until one day he encounters Clarisse McClellan, a cheerful 17-year-old who walks at his side as he returns from work and fills his mind with thought-provoking notions. He subsequently experiences a series of disturbing incidents, which cause him to question his empty if hedonistic life and, in his disillusionment, seek answers in the very place he is expected to eschew.
“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
Bradbury supplies subtle writerly references aplenty – from Thoreau’s Walden to Plato’s The Republic – should you take pleasure in spotting literary allusions. He splits the narrative into three parts, each one ending in fire, thus constructing a 20th century allegory of a post-literate hell. The resultant effect is of a bleak but fast-paced suspenseful fantasy.
Should you be curious, 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the heat at which it is claimed book-paper catches fire. Bradbury originally said he was driven to write the novel because of his concerns over book burning in the United States, however, he later described his work as a commentary on the way mindless consumption of mass media reduces interest in reading literature.
While it may lack the subtlety and political profundity of Nineteen Eighty-Four or the barbed wit of Brave New World – indeed, it is very much a book of its time (think 1953, at the height of McCarthyism) – Fahrenheit 451 still resonates with modern readers. It succeeds, as the author probably intended, in being a searing indictment of state-based censorship in a country whose intellectually diminished citizens delight in the spectacle of public book burnings.
“Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic that any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,’ he said, ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
This is my eleventh choice for The Classics Club.
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I like to ask people what book they would be in a Fahrenheit 451 world (my answer is Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Well, that would certainly confuse them. Gosh, I would need to think about that! 🤔
I’ve been meaning to read this forever and now I know it’s a novella I’m even more convinced! Great review Paula 😊
Thank you, Madame B. 😊 It’s one of those books that has been on my TBR shelf for aeons. I finally got around to reading it in August but only wrote this piece last night. I’ve never before been so lax with my posts. Anyhow, I’m sure this would be ideal for your Novella a Day. It’s easy to read (which is why it is probably used in schools), typically 1950s in its use of language (American not British, of course) but it has depth if you care to look. It’s certainly worth considering.
Has anyone seen Christian bales movie equilibrium? Very similar. I think it took part of it’s premise from farenheit
I’m afraid I haven’t Mike – although I nipped over to Wikipedia after reading your comment and I can see there are some similarities. 😊
Good to have memories of this novella and film revived – it’s such a long time since I read the book and saw the film.
I haven’t seen the film. Will watching the movie be marred by reading the book first? You can never be sure.
Outstanding
Thank you.
An extended short story but still, I classic and a scary dystopian future I hope none of us ever live to see.
Yes, it is certainly on the short side but it packs a punch. I agree, that sort of society would be quite the wrong sort of place for us bookish types! 😲
Sometimes I wish more writers wrote shorter works, but that’s for another discussion, right? 😀 And yeah, not our kind of future. lol!
This is always a good one!
Indeed!
Such a long time since I read this and saw the film, but still haunted by it. And it does not, alas, seem any less relevant. I wish I had a good enough brain to memorise a book….
Yes, I agree, but which book would you memorise? There are so many possibilities! 🤔
That world view does sound horribly familiar. From my office I could watch the tv of the house opposite – the screen was that big!
I can well imagine, Karen. Some of these flat screen TVs are ridiculously large!
It’s the wall screens that I always remember from this book, especially as TVs get bigger and bigger every year! I think it cured me of my incipient Coronation Street addiction… 😉
I haven’t watched Corrie for donkeys years but my partner’s completely hooked. In the odd snatches I’ve glimpsed in recent times it seems like a different soap. No Elsie Tanner or Hilda Ogden – not even Emily Bishop. Things in’t what they used to be down Rovers!
This one is taught in AP Language as part of the civil disobedience unit. Never fails to engage students. It’s a winner!
Thanks Pam, that’s really interesting. It would seem the ideal book for a course of this type.
My gosh…this one book is the stuff of so many memories of all the various times I’ve read it. And whenever you mention it in a crowd someone will always ask, “If you lived in a situation like this, what book would you choose to memorize?” So far, I have been able to avoid the answer! But I find the whole premise just chilling, especially when I hear about a book burning somewhere, which incredibly, happens.
I keep changing my mind about the book I would choose to memorise. As if I would ever be capable of remembering an entire book with my dreadful memory. Perhaps I should go for something by Beatrix Potter. The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies maybe! 😂
My son read this in school last year, but he didn’t say a lot about it. How did I not know it was about book burning?!
One of those books I keep meaning to read… (along with 1984 and Brave New World!) Great review!
Thank you, Naomi. Although I’ve read the latter two novels you mention, Fahrenheit 451 has been one of the very many titles on my TBR list for aeons. If it wasn’t for the various book challenges I probably wouldn’t get around to reading half of them!
That is one of the many benefits of this bookish community. 🙂