Blurb:
Nearly seventy 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.
Review:
It has been about four or five years since I last wrote something in depth about “Fahrenheit 451”.
Well, a review at least, in written form. The other two times I’ve discussed this book in any way is a YouTube video I haven’t rewatched and would probably question why I made it in the first place, and a lengthy point at how it is relevant today. Both are more and also less than this.
If I had to sell this book to you, in keeping with the formatting, I’d try to describe it in one or two sentences:
“Guy Montag loves to burn, it is his job as a firefighter. Then he has an existential crisis leading to learning more about a world that has been lost. Care for more?”
It does little to explain the book, and if you’ve already read it, you know what the existential crisis is, but I hope it is grappling enough to keep you reading or to go find the book somewhere.
However if that isn’t the case, let me introduce you first to the character the story follows. Guy Montag. He’s your everyday guy, part of the firefighting department and loving it. After work, he usually takes the metro and walks the rest of the way home, showing he is at least interested in the world around him. As a man, he is thoughtful, frugal with the income with he has, and, though not at first, curious into what the world has become.
Then, there’s the plot of the book. “It was a pleasure to burn”, is probably the more recognisable quote of the book. Of course, it is the beginning of the story and upon reading it, you’d think that the vast majority of the book is arson.
Long story short, it is mostly about arson. But in-between the burning, there’s also a plot of discovery and recognition that the world wasn’t always like it was, and that the past has been rewritten to fit the most pleasing explanations.
And by the end of Bradburys’ tale, you come away with the sense that not all yet is lost, leaving it up to your own interpretation.
Then, worldbuilding. It is quite tied together with the story, hinging upon the slow discovery that the world, and where Montag is, wasn’t always like it.
Despite being around 70ish years old, the technology described within fits into the modern world quite well. You’d be remiss to think that the seashells in people’s ears and the screens displaying constant dopamine are acutely here in the 21st century. Not quite the way they’re described in the book, yet still, unmistakably, in the here and now.
Lastly, instead of flaws (the problem with Bradbury is that it hard to find with his works), I’d like to point out how modern the book is and how even though not as discussed as some others (1984, A Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange), it is still relevant.
Now the reasons why it is still relevant are many, but to keep it short, I’d like to boil it down to one thing: “the importance of literature and the discussion of such in an age of illiteracy”.
Now, more than ever, literature by humans is precious and needed. With the rise of AI, the rise of polarisation and the rise of social media, book clubs are more needed than ever.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading this and I hope I haven’t been too off putting in the last part, and I hope I’ve swayed you to moving this book up on the TBR list or adding it to the list. However if I’ve not done that, I’d like to ask that you check out some other review on this website via this random link. It might be to your liking, it might not, let randomness reign.
Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
