Ray Bradbury is the living master of the science fiction genre. This stuff is good, written in 1953, even if you are like me and don’t like science fiction. Pass on those Bush-bashing movies by disingenuous poorly dressed film-makers and go to the real thing.
This Fahrenheit is called 451 because that is the temperature at which books burn, more or less, and that is what this is about. Reminiscent of Hitlerian Germany, book burning is back in vogue in the eastern US in the late 20th century. The first ironic twist is that the firemen start the fires to burn the books, generally engulfing the book owner’s home, and sometimes the book owner as well.
Guy Montag is a third generation fireman who starts to question the purpose and meaning in burning books. All homes have been somehow fireproofed, so no real fires occur, only those started by the fire department. Montag’s wife sits home all day, watching mindless broadcasts on large screens, and complaining that Guy needs to earn more money in order to purchase even larger screens. Her ultimate objective is to cover all four walls of the living room with monitors.
Guy starts to sneak home some of the books and of course, he ultimately becomes the target of his own department. He learns that he should not trust his wife or his colleagues, all of whom long ago drank the kool-aid. He does make the acquaintance of an elderly professor, an intellectual and scholar from the old days, who ultimately puts him in touch with others of a similar ilk.
The Essay on Intelligence Book To Build A Fire
Intelligence (Book: To Build A Fire) There are characters at many levels of intelligence in literature. In Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire" the character lacks any intelligence. The cold "did not lead him to mediate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold" (483). This weak minded ...
Perhaps most interesting is the reason givien for burning the books. Non-fiction is bad, since it is all contradictory and impossible to prove, and fiction is even worse since it is not even true, just made-up people, places, and dialogue. And dont get me started on poetry or philosophy, that will only cause confusion, sorrow, and feelings of being lost. Society has made a clear selection in its entertainment, with an absolute preference for high speed sports, action, and adventure.
More irony follows as Montag on several occasions becomes both the observer and the target as he is pursued by the authorities. Then we learn from reading a book that books are not a suitable way for humanity to store knowledge, that requires dedicated but powerless and marginalized scholars involved in constant peer review and analysis. The last irony is that Bradbury has written a very short book here, actually a novella, because he knows that we prefer action and adventure to reading.
As of this 2005 writing, I understand that Bradbury is in his 80’s and still working. In various interviews, he expressed anger that Michael Moore would adapt his title for a completely unrelated and unfunny diatribe. But then, Bradbury lifted “Something Wicked This Way Comes” right out of Shakespeare. What comes around, goes around.