Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
About Author:
Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5,
2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated
20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy,
science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.
Summary:
This is a story about a man named Guy Montag who is a
fireman. He's not a fireman by today's standards though. Instead of putting out
fires, he starts them by burning books, which are outlawed by the government.
After talking to his neighbour, Clarisse, Guy begins to question his work. He
looks around and sees a wife who doesn't love him and an entire society caught
up in technology and war. People kill each other every day and no one seems to
care. After learning that Clarisse died, Guy further begins to question whether
or not he is doing the right thing by burning books. So much so, that he steals
a book before burning a lady and pile of books.
His fire captain, Beatty, notice changes in Guy and watches
him carefully. Guy reveals to his wife that he's had a small collection of
books in their house and they try to read them together, but his wife is
disinterested. Guy meets an old English professor, Faber, and they decide to
fight the government. Meanwhile, when Guy is at work, they get an alarm that
books have been discovered. Surprisingly, the firemen end up at Guy's house. Guy
is forced to burn all of his books with a flamethrower, but then kills Beatty
when provoked. He grabs what books he can and runs to Faber's house for a last
goodbye.
The government has a full televised search for Guy, even
using a mechanical search dog to track him. Guy makes it out of the city and
travels down the river, where he meets a group of runaways. There, he learns
that they all have memorized books, a human library of literature. In the end,
the runaways see the city being destroyed by enemy bombs and prepare for the
grim future. So why does this society not like books? What did book ever do to
people? In this society, people have chosen to not read books. It's that
simple.
The majority of people stopped reading and instead wanted
entertainment with bite-sized portions of educational information. From there,
the government decided that books should be banned because books contained
conflicting ideas that brought about arguments and conflicts. So rather than
have a marketplace of ideas, the government wanted to streamline thinking so
that everyone thought the same way. And what's scary is that this doesn't seem
too farfetched to happen in real life. Most importantly, this story tries to
answer the question: Why are books so important? As Faber discusses with Guy,
books are valuable for three reasons.
The first is that books hold quality information. The second
reason is that books require time to read them, a commitment. And the third
reason is that we have the ability to react to our world based on what we, as
readers, gain from the read material. That the words in books are not just
lifeless words, but carry meaning that has real life application in our lives.
It's not just that this old dead guy wrote some things for me to have to read
hundreds of years later, but how do those words apply to our society today?
Even though technology has advanced our world, we still tend to see the same
human problems from the past, so it seems that technology makes our lives
easier, but doesn't really solve many of our most basic problems, like war,
disease, and poverty. It is quite scary how the author could have imagined some
of the technology that we find ourselves using today.
In the story, the society has fast cars, mechanical dogs,
large TV screens, reality TV, bluetooth, and a host of other technologies. It
makes you wonder how far we are from a world without books.
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