Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Good... But Not An Easy Read
The basic premise behind Ray Bradbury's novel 'Fahrenheit 451' is compelling. In the future, fireman don't put out fires, they start them. It is their job to seek out books and put them to the flame, making sure that no one indulges in the 'crime' of reading one. But what makes this nightmare so interesting, and relevant, is that it was not forced upon the people by their government, but was decided upon by the people themselves. Minority groups, religions, and ethnicities, who were offended by the words of writers, simply made reading unpopular and convinced the world that books were, first, a waste of time, and then the root of all evil. A wonderful 'Negative Utopia' novel in the tradition of '1984' and 'Brave New World' Bradbury's novel differs in his writing style. His prose is difficult to follow and at times leaves the reader unimpressed. If you can you're not easily turned off by Bradbury's odd and difficult way of writing perhaps you'll enjoy the deeper message of this work.
Rating: - Ideas Can Be Unpleasant
Ray Bradbury uses the idea of a book burning society in Fahrenheit 451 to represent the destruction that popular culture has wrought on the intellectual exchange that existed before the advent of mass market entertainment. If given the choice between easy and difficult, most people will choose easy. Books represent the hard things in life. They contain ideas and opinions that may be different from our own and that may challenge us to think and understand in ways that we never comprehended before.One key thing to understand about Bradbury's masterpiece is that the book burning didn't come from the government. It started with the populace progressively ignoring books because they upset too many people. It began with minority groups (anyone from Chinese to left-handed people) ripping 'offensive' pages from books and destroying them. So began the homogenating process that is popular culture and group identity. In F. 451, Guy Montag is a fireman. In this world firemen start fires, they don't stop them. They burn the houses that harbor the illegal books. Montag runs across a teenage girl named Clarisse who challenges Montag's view of the world. She gets him to do the most dangerous thing that any person can do: think. Once Montag starts to think about his world and what he does, he is destined to either rebel against this repressive society or kill himself (which many of Montag's fellow citizens opt to do). F. 451 shows that it's not books that are revolutionary but the free flow of ideas that they promote. The wall-tv in the parlor is everything that is wrong with Montag's world and our's as well. The wall-tv literally drowns out any chance that people will communicate once they set themselves in front of its addicting glow. The sweet irony of all this is that man has used his brain so well that we have come to a point where we no longer have to think to survive. We have created countless machines that do our thinking for us. In F. 451 no one really thinks about what they do, they just do it. It's what the do, it's what they've always done, so it's what they'll always continue to do. Until of course somewhere along the way someone steps outside of himself and observes himself going about his routine and questions it. The most dangerous man in the world is the man who asks not just how but why.
Rating: - Fahrenheit 451
I read Fahrenheit 451 at school. Before I picked it my Mom was telling me how she enjoyed reading the book before me ,so naturally me being a teenager assumed that the book was going to be stupid ,but I got it anyway .It turned out that Fahrenheit 451 was one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. It's true to life sci-fi theme puts me in the future world as depicted by Ray Bradbury where firemen are paid to start fires instead of put them out. I read the book once before but the second time around was much better. Allot of details in the book were overlooked by me the first time .It captures the decay of modern day literature to technological advances such as television and amplifies it with a sci-fi twist to the point where literature is forbidden .The reader follows the character montag through the story as the reluctant firemen begins to long for literature .His wife is addicted to television so she doesn't really help him with his self-esteem .He meets a man named Faber who helps him learn more about literature while his secret still remains kept .Eventually he ends up with a choice between his job and his life .A problems with this book is as follows ; If literature is forbidden how to they teach children ? Overall It was a good book and if you haven't read it yet I'd recommend that you do.
|
