Fahrenheit 451 in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 01, 2008 Carrie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-and-a-half-to-5-stars, read-my-shelves, science-fiction, classics, favorites, dystopia, mini-tbr-1

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The main character is Guy Montag a fireman. But not in the way that we know it. In this time in the future houses are
safeguarded against fires, these fireman set fires, they are known as "book burners". Because books where for burning they
corrupted the mind. But thanks to the interesting free thinking characters that we meet Montag realizes what he has to do. He realizes that books are something to be saved and read. It wasn't a crime to take joy in what lies between the pages. Do to his actio ...more

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May 14, 2008 Meika rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This one is going on the short list of all-time-favorite, buy a copy to dogear and write in and sleep with books.
I'm sort of ashamed, no... really ashamed to admit I haven't read it before. It's one of those books that you know is important, know why it's important, and can even talk about the context in which it is important without having read it. Which is ironic... ironic because in fact, I was wrong about what the book was about and was only referring to some abstraction of book-burning cen This one is going on the short list of all-time-favorite, buy a copy to dogear and write in and sleep with books.
I'm sort of ashamed, no... really ashamed to admit I haven't read it before. It's one of those books that you know is important, know why it's important, and can even talk about the context in which it is important without having read it. Which is ironic... ironic because in fact, I was wrong about what the book was about and was only referring to some abstraction of book-burning censorship.
What I had come to expect (regardless of the fact that Ray Bradbury is incapable of producing it) was some sort of homeopathic dilution of the burning-books-is-bad rhetoric. What I got was 151 proof and flammable. It was sort of about censorship, but was more about how it's far more dangerous to shut out ideas because they make you uncomfortable or unhappy or dissatisfied than it is to be uncomfortable, unhappy or dissatisfied. It's also about how not allowing an idea to change your worldview robs you of some critical part of being human. When people say Farenheit 451 is about censorship, they're one step off. It's about the social factors (mass stupidity) that make censorship possible, and not just censorship but total apathy. If nobody gives a damn, censorship is a moot point. So it isn't about censorship or fire. The title makes that clear. It's a metaphor - the ambient temperature at which paper will autoignite represents the ambient level of mass stupidity at which human wisdom will cease to be relevant.

When Montag encounters Clarisse, she acts as a catalyst in his life and he experiences a catastrophic renaissance... begins to see the world around him, to recognize the total void of context.

Heat index - loosely associated observations:
This really resonated on my Mormon channel. I can't count how many times I was told not to read Stephen King because what he writes about is unwholesome.... or to avoid examining "philosophies of the mind" because they lead to doubt, and "seek those things which are uplifting and beautiful" etc ad vomitum. And there's a blacklist for books, and any movies rated PG-13 or worse are taboo to the degree that you are considered deviant if you cave to the temptation of watching them. And the dirty, dark, secret history of the church has been exponged from recent editions of the church history chronicles, lest followers discover the founding prophet was a charlatan. And there's this disgusting sense of entitlement to happiness. The result is this socially-enforced numbness and stupidity, not even inertia so much as a total lack of autonomy.

It also made me think about libraries, and what Ray Bradbury would think about the state of the average community public library. I remember the big debate from collection development class over whether or not it was important to give people what they want (tawdry romances, comic books, porn, and Tim LeHaye (gag)) or to provide them a way to elevate themselves (classics, SAT study guides, and art books). This begs the question, what is the criteria for what elevates; which leads to the essential question of quality and Quality is tough to pin down. So, the right answer is: the library shouldn't have to cater to the will of "community standards" in an effort to meet user needs, and if you collect in effort to keep the psycho-christian lady with son who looks at porn from defacing the slim volume of Mapelthorpe in your photography section and blacking out all the bad words in The Diary of Anais Nin... well, what have you upheld and who have you served?
...more

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Mar 02, 2008 Jaci McCon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, read-in-2008

I somehow managed to major in Literature and Writing without having to read or even hear about this book. My boyfriend, who read the book in high school, decided that I should read it and bought me a copy. I'm glad that I read this novel, and was a little scared by how relevant it is to the world that we live in today, with it's censorship of topics that can be offensive to smaller groups and the frightening influence that the media has over us.

My understanding of how this novel is usually inter I somehow managed to major in Literature and Writing without having to read or even hear about this book. My boyfriend, who read the book in high school, decided that I should read it and bought me a copy. I'm glad that I read this novel, and was a little scared by how relevant it is to the world that we live in today, with it's censorship of topics that can be offensive to smaller groups and the frightening influence that the media has over us.

My understanding of how this novel is usually interpreted is as a commentary on the evils of censorship. This makes sense to me, since the primary motif of the novel is the burning of books. However, this was not the main message that I came away with.

I believe that Bradbury is commenting not just on book censorship but also on the impact of mass media. When we allow mass media to influence how we interpret the world, we lose the opportunity to form views of our own. So many of the characters in the book were too busy paying attention to the televisions in their "parlours" and listening to their "families" on the screens than communicating with one another. Trusting the media to supply all of the necessary information leaves people in the dark about their true situation and unexperienced with asking questions to improve their situation. As true testament to this, the city was attacked in a nuclear war that the citizens did not know much about and were unprepared for. The city was leveled by the end of the book and it is unclear how many, if any, survivors there were from the attack. However Montag, the main character, did know about the war and had asked throughout the book why no one was talking about it or asking about it. The group of intellectuals that he ran into after swimming down the river were informed about the war and anticipated the nuclear attack because their lives were not overly influenced by the media.

It was also interesting that Bradbury not only painted the media as controlling but also manipulative. When the chase was on to find Montag and he was no where to be found, the media lied to the public. They cornered and killed an innocent citizen while claiming that it was Montag. They did this in order to give viewers a conclusion to the ordeal that showed them in a good light. They did not want the people to know that they did not have control of the situation. They also wanted to be able to get people back to their "regularly scheduled programming" and "live as usual" to continue their control of them.

I believe that the books were banned because the content in novels, generated by free-thinking individuals, is not something that the media can control. The more people who have access to books, or anything that promotes creativity and freedom of thought, the less able the media will be to control them. Interestingly, tabloids were still a legal form of communication, containing articles no longer than a page in length and, more than likely, content that was filtered and manipulated to conform with the overall agenda of the media. ...more

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Sep 18, 2021 Natalie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

This book has a narrow focus. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman but as fireman he burns books. For some reason, after meeting a young woman named Clarisse he starts to hide a few books. His wife watched tv on giant screens all day instead. Montag meets an older professor, Faber and talks with him about his love for reading and the value of books: the one contrast to the heartless destruction of books. In a pivotal scene in the book Montag burns down his own house with a flamethrower a ...more

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