fahrenheit 451
by ray bradbury
★★★★☆
dates read: 7/25/22 - 7/26/22
"Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
Guy Montag is a fireman. 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 when 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, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known."
i love speculative dystopians so i was really excited to read fahrenheit 451 and bradbury did not disappoint.
the concept of a world where book burning is normalized to the point of being a career, is terrifying. throughout the novel, bradbury emphasizes the importance of literature but also raises questions for the younger generations that are being raised with access to technology.
“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”
considering the pervasive nature of technology in the 21st century, i can't help but wonder if reading is slowly becoming archaic, and if it is, what does that mean for society. television is one of the only forms of entertainment in fahrenheit 451 and it resembles how in in the current decade, visual stimulation is the preferred form of digesting just about anything. although there is the practice of studying the meaning behind certain components of film, but it's hard to distinguish the skills used to analyze film from what one is taught in their english literature classes. with the rise of technology, what happens to the skills that can only be taught through words, sentences, books?
fahrenheit 451 also opens up a conversation on whether media that lacks controversy or nuance is capable of cultivating a more neutral society. the world of fahrenheit 451 lacks polarization. the media that they consume in the world is often spoon-fed from a television on vague plots that don't provoke anything within its watcher or actor. but the ignorance and blindness of the people within bradbury's story mean more than simply being blind. the citizens within such a monotonous and simpleminded world will never be able to get to the root of their own demise, which we see in the novel's ending, and the cycle will restart as it always does.
except for the one's who remember. although granger takes a more soft-handed approach, deciding to wait for when the people are ready to learn. knowledge in this world is both power and a saving grace.
fahrenheit 451 is pretty fast paced perhaps a bit too fast at times, but i thoroughly enjoyed the reading about the strength that books carry and the responsibility that comes with it.