Fahrenheit 451 - Good Old Reads

Fahrenheit 451 - Simon & Schuster Paperbacks - 2018

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury (Photo: Alan Light)

Despite having been published almost 75 years ago, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 portrays an analogous—albeit extreme—look similar to the approach taken by many Americans today towards history, education, and intellectual freedom. And as a bonus, it’s a genuinely enthralling sci-fi thriller.

High Point: Bradbury’s narrative flows easily, and never detracts from a complex message.

Low Point: None

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publication Date: 1953

Genre: Science Fiction

Banned Book (Tennessee and Texas)

From the frontispiece of the first edition of Fahrenheit 451 - 1953 — Drawing by Joseph Mugnaini from the first edition of Fahrenheit 451

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A Banned Book About Banned Books

The novel focuses on Guy Montag, a fireman in the future where fire departments start fires instead of fighting them. Burning books is their primary function as the government works to spare its citizens from free and diverse thought. And Montag has begun to question that fundamental drive to uniformity.

A successful author and screenwriter for more than 50 years, Bradbury’s narrative flows easily and never detracts from the message. The reader is often inside Montag’s head—and his thoughts are sometimes disjointed and panicky. But Bradbury manages to maintain a shaky but coherent thread that enables us to trace Montag’s evolution to a new paradigm.

Interestingly, some of Bradbury’s cultural paradigms did not shift. Although the story occurs far into the future—with its advanced technologies and institutional fascism—many of the 1950s social norms remain intact. For example, everyone still smokes, and of course, a woman’s place is still at home.

Also, Bradbury made an amusing choice of names for his protagonist, Montag, and Montag’s first cohort, Faber. In the 1950s, Montag was a well-known manufacturer of paper and stationery while Faber-Castell made high-end pens and pencils.

Bradbury wrote this novel in 1953 as McCarthyism was thriving with its attempts at censorship and the persecution of those who disagreed with certain government policies—much as we’re seeing in the United States today. School districts nationwide are restricting or forbidding access to books—including this one—many of which stress diversity instead of uniformity. Some state legislatures and local law enforcement agencies are pursuing educators and librarians for discussing topics in the classroom or stocking books that don’t agree with their philosophies.

Bradbury took these circumstances of his time and exploded them into the radical conditions of Fahrenheit 451—perhaps a parable for his time and ours.

Quotes

With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word “intellectual,” of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.