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 Fahrenheit 451 :: 0345342968
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| In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature. Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
Ray Bradbury's 1953 phantasmagoric blockbuster "Fahrenheit 451", written at the height of the fabulist's authorial powers, is a tale of a world gone mad, a topsy-turvy America in which black leather-clad firemen race laughing on their steely Salamanders on midnight alarms, not to quench fires but to start them.
The firemen of the nightmare world of "Fahrenheit 451", of which the novel's hero Guy Montag is a dedicated one, comprise an army turned against an enemy far more insidious than Flame: they mobilize against ideas, and turn their napalm hoses on the feeble paper on which those subversive ideas are printed, and on the vulnerable binding in which the paper is housed.
When I first read "Fahrenheit 451" nearly two decades ago, I felt beaten down, nauseated and fatigued. I believed then, and believe now, that it was the most scarily bleak and mercilessly depressing book I had ever read. Even then, I felt the cushion between Bradbury's 24th century nightmare and what we call modern reality was thin and worn.
Bradbury gave us until the 24th century to submerge ourselves in the dark, sedated, media-slaked night of "Fahrenheit 451." Looking around me, I have come to the conclusion that Bradbury was a pretty optimstic guy.
Like Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" is a dystopian vision, a glimpse into a future America that is frighteningly familiar and yet horribly wrong. It is a technologically advanced, subtle, sophisticated world, full of high-definition television screens that take up an entire wall and beam 24 hour programming to a vacant and eager television audience, 24-hour Reality programming that serves up a TV "Family" more engaging, more lifelike, more agreeable, than their own.
This is a world where bored, vacuous housewives exchange barbs on the latest presidential contenders laced with observations on which candidate is the most handsome, and which has the most noticeable (to the Television Audience, naturally) facial bunion or boil. It is a world of 'seashells', tiny earphones designed to nest in the inner ear and breathe a sussurus of music into the mind of a medicated listener.
Like his English counterparts Huxley and Orwell, Bradbury has served up a soft tyrannical state manned, not by the zealous, but by zombies. It is a world ruled by the media-addicted, the apathetic, the listless, the medicated, the overdosed, the sleeping. Books have been banned, and consigned to the Flame, not because of a despotic regime, but by the common, courteous consensus of a modern democracy desperately eager not to give offense to anyone.
Sound familiar?
Much like "1984", "Fahrenheit 451" works because it drills down on an unlikely protagonist. Guy Montag, at least when we meet him, sincerely loves his job. His fellow firemen are not zealots or fascists, but simply pragmatic working men who enjoy what they do. There are unpleasant aspects to the work, naturally---among them the incineration of an old eccentric woman who prefer to die with her beloved books---but like most of "Fahrenheit 451"'s society, Montag prefers not to think about it. Take a pill, or better still take two---and don't call me in the morning. For Montag, truly, it is a 'pleasure to burn'.
Like most revolutionaries, though, Guy Montag is simmering from within; dissatisifed with his wife, whose stomach must be pumped on the very evening he returns from the euphoria of the Burn; dissatisifed with the apathetic society in which he lives; dissatisfied with a job which fails to give expression to the rebel soul that burns within, that impels him to challenge his wife's brazen, flippant friends.
There are three catalysts that propel Montag to rebellion: the girl Clarisse, whom he befriends; the immolation of the old woman at the Fire; and his own clandestine book collection.
"Fahrenheit 451" succeeds as both jeremiad and prophecy, true, but it also engages because Bradbury is a literary master: his spare, mechanical narrative of Montag's wife having her stomach pumped by two callous, dirty, jocular technicians practically breathes pure horror, and is one of the most soul-deadening passages I have ever read.
But "451" also succeeds because it is a mirror of our own increasingly apathetic, violent, media-saturated world: is it so hard to see ourselves in Montag's trackless, cookie-cutter suburban landscape where bookish teenage girls are run down beneath the wheels of speeding pranksters, themselves bored and looking for the cheap thrill of ultra-violence? Is it so hard to see ourselves in the avidity of the Television Audience, watching the panicked, doomed, frantic rictus face of the condemned man stalked by the mechanical Hound, the images of his death broadcast back by the electronic antennaes on the monster's back? Isn't that merely COPS or "Survivor" with a bite?
I've seen the Future, and it works. Because it is our world I see, our world upon us---for that reason, "Fahrenheit 451" is the most terrifying book I have ever read.
JSG
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Author: Guest
I sat down to read this book a bit listlessly. I was reading it, not for pleasure, but for school. We had to pick a novel to read, and Fahrenheit 451 is the one my mom suggested. As soon as I'd finished the first two or three pages, I was hooked. Fahrenheit 451 had perpetual tension at every turn. I could never wait to find out what would happen next.
Ray Bradbury wove a vision of a future civilization that burned books and the houses in which they were hidden. As The New York Times put it, "Bradbury's account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating." And they are absolutely right. Of all the characters in the book, the one I saw most clearly was Guy Montag, a fireman whose job it was to start fires. Guy is the main character in this story. He agonizes over what life to choose: the ignorant one as a fireman or the life on the run. In the end, he must make a choice.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most provocative and interesting books I've ever read. All things accounted for; I would say that this novel is one of the most amazing novels of the twentieth century.
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Author: Guest
Although not as profound as George Orwell's "1984", "Fahrenheit 451" still stands as a prophetic warning against the evils of censorship, and controlling the masses through ignorance.
The little lost in profundity by comparison to "1984" is more than made up in readability. Whereas "1984" took me two days to complete, I read through "Fahrenheit 451" in an afternoon. Additionally "1984" ends with an feeling of hopelessness, whereas 451 ends with some degree of optimism for the future.
Overall, 451 still stands out as one of a limited number of dystopian stories whose message remains as vital today as when it was published.
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Author: Guest
The book Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury was in the Science Fiction section and was located in the future. Guy Montag was a fireman, but in the future they do not put out fires, they they start them. Guy is trying to figure out his hard and confusing life in the future. When he meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan who changes everything and gives him a new point of view of the world.
What I like most about this book was the setting and the time, the future makes you wonder about what you're living in now and what might happen in the future. What I didn't like about the book was that it was a little hard and confusing at times for my age reading.
My favorite charater in this book was Clarisse McCellan because she has such a different mind than everyone else and sees things in different perspectives. A paragraph that meant something to me was on page 37 and said "Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his upturned face. A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim light, a page flung open and it was like a snow feather, the words delicately painted thereon." It meant something to me beacause all of these books around him makes him wonder about his job, life, and Clarisse and what she had said.
I would tell someone about this book that it is great but to read it at a good reading level. So it's not too hard or confusing to read. The only question I have after reading this is, in some ways is Beatty the villan of Station 451? My strongest reason for recommending this book is that it describes each pararaph beautifully and has a great plot.
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Author: Guest
Anthony F.Miller Place
This book is Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury. This is a realistic fiction book based on a futuristic world. This book is a mystery in some aspects and it could somewhat be an action book.
This book is about a man named Guy Mortag. He is a firefighter who doesn't put out fire, but starts them. If someone has books the firefighters go to there house and burn the books. Guy starts talking to a young girl named Clarisse. She has many different views on the world compared to other people in the time she is living in. Guy starts thinking about what she is talking about and that makes him start questioning every aspect of his life. Guy later reveals that he has a full library of books, to his wife that he has been hiding. Now he only has twenty-four hours to reads the books before he can get caught by the firefighters.
This book is suited for an older audience. The writing style and the vocabulary the author uses will be a little hard for the younger reader to understand.
In general I thought the book was okay. I enjoyed some parts of the book, but other parts just bored me and I couldn't wait until I finished what I was reading. If you are interested in futuristic and or realistic fictional stories then you should read this one.
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