Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.
Fahrenheit 451 gets right to the point and moves really fast. Which adds an element of suspense.
There is not much world building. The war is never fully explained, nor are the politics between the opposing sides. I was left with a few questions about that, as well as timelines in the word they live in; and how do they know about God and Christ if Bibles are not read?
This answers my question about the timelines:
The fact that Bradbury leaves the precise details of the setting obscure has important implications for the book’s central message. Namely, the obscurity enables Bradbury to warn that disaster could lie in store for all the United States, and in the near future.
I think if this had been written today it would be a dystopian trilogy with lots of world building and a lot more answers. I was reading on Spark's Notes:
Also, the huge mass of published material is too overwhelming to think about, leading to a society that reads condensed books (which were very popular at the time Bradbury was writing) rather than the real thing.
That explains why it was short book!
But me being so used to big epic novels that span over the course of a series or a trilogy I wanted more. I wanted to know more about Clarisse McClellan and her family. Who were they and how did they come to be so unorthodox in the current society of the book's world?
What about the other characters and their backgrounds?
It being a standalone the end seemed abrupt. While somewhat hopeful for the future, I also wanted more.
That being said, I loved the story because I loved the message:
1) That for "a full life people need exposure to nature and the world of books, leisure to think, and freedom to act" ... Without books and time to reflect on their meaning people are mindless, superficial, unhappy drones. Basically, turn off the TV (and social media). Appreciate the silence for a once and be an independent thinker.
2) How we all have something to leave behind after we are gone, a work of art, or a garden, etc, anything we made or loved.
I loved the symbolism with the fires, the phoenix, the mirrors - OH Montag is named after a paper-manufacturing company and Faber is a maker of pencils.
Also, I loved the why because it shows how some things never change. A small group of people were "offended" by a message in a book and then wanted it edited out or cancelled all together. There is also the aspect of people being addicted to the "families" (soap operas), instant gratification, and violence on television.
As the Afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempts to restrict his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to letters he has received suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters. He sees such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerant-as the first step on the road to book burning.
I agree. If you don't like something, don't read it. But to ask that it be edited or deleted? No. Go write your own story then. Why do authors have to walk (or write) on eggshells just to make sure no one is offended? Guess what? Not everyone is going to be happy or like it. Someone somewhere is not going to like it. Doesn't mean they get to become a bully and tell the author to censor themselves. Either debate them, write something different yourself, or walk away.
Knowledge versus Ignorance
Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle revolves around the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to equalize the population and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach. His resultant search for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone else, and he battles the basic beliefs of his society.
Equity will not make people happy. As seen in this story.
Favorite quotes:
And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of those books A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before.
Montag looked at the cards in his own hands. “I-I’ve been thinking. About the fire last week. About the man whose library we fixed. What happened to him?”
“They took him screaming off to the asylum.”
“He wasn’t insane.” Beatty arranged his cards quietly.
“Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us.”
The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!
The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.
5 out of 5 Firemen.