Fahrenheit 451

Title: Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

ISBN: 0345342968

Publisher: Ballantine Books; New Edition edition (1979)

Copyright: 1953

Genre: Science Fiction

Age Range: 15+

Reader’s Annotation: In a society that burns books when found, a fireman struggles to understand what his role is in society. When he finds out the goodness that books hold, does he burn them for societal good or save them because they are the key to what he seeks?

Plot Summary: Guy Montag is a fireman. But this is not the type of fireman who we think of putting out fires. Instead, the dystopian America that Guy lives in requires firemen to start fires. The fires are started with any piece of art or culture from the past society of America or the world to be used as kindling. Books are public enemy number one. His job is to purge these items and memories from society at large. The new American society do not read books, have thoughtful conversations, spend time alone, or even go outside. They are a homogenized herd that participate in programs with their wall sized television and radio sets.

When Montag meets a young teen named Clarisse on his way to work, she opens his eyes to nature and the secrets to life that books contain. Montag starts to see the importance of books. These independent thoughts and musings further open the rift between Guy and his wife. His questions start to bleed over into his work life. Montag witnesses a woman who is burned to death because she would rather die with her books. After this, he starts to take books home and learns how to read. Chief Beatty notices Montag’s odd behavior and confronts him about books and their contents. Beatty’s confrontation sets off a chain of events that are the beginning of the end for Montag’s participation in the new American society.

Critical Evaluation: In 2000, Ray Bradbury received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for his work Fahrenheit 451. This work could be considered part of the foundation of American science fiction. Bradbury uses a dystopian America to address the problem of censorship. While the reasons of Fahrenheit 451’s world book burning are purposefully ambiguous, the reality of the paranoid 1950s and the Red Scare are quite clear. There is a fear in information. The government is afraid that if people have access to contrary information they may read it and act upon it. Bradbury believes that people should be allowed to read anything that they would like, whether they act upon these new ideas is another matter. Access to information and freedom to search it freely should be a base right. Bradbury believed that any deviation from no censorship would be just one step closer to book burning.

Author Information: Ray Bradbury is the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other awards. His other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind. As a self taught author, Bradbury worked during the day, and wrote during the night eventually becoming a full time writer. His perseverance and drive never left him from his beginning to his passing at age 91 in 2012.

Curriculum Ties: Politics, Philosophy, History, Censorship.

Challenge Issues: Anti-authoritarian; Anti-Government 

Booktalk Ideas: Censorship – Discussion can be made about what censorship is and the extreme case that Fahrenheit 451 shows. The history of censorship can be explored in real life cases like American and German propaganda during World War II and pre-war German book burning.