jordanabina
You can log this under books everyone seems to have read while in High School when I was doing other things with my life. Because everyone that I’ve talked to seems to have already read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, but not me.
Bradbury takes the reader into a dystopian future where news is controlled, minds seem to be toyed with, and roles in society are distorted. The homes have no porches because that leads to people sitting on them for extended periods of time, which leads to conversation and thinking, which leads to bad things.
And above all, there are no books allowed.
Books carry ideas, and ideas bring all types of problems. Our protagonist of the story, known as Montag, is a fireman, but even this job has been distorted. There was a day where firemen would put out fires, these firemen burn people’s houses down if they find books inside, and maybe even the people with it.
I’ve read a few different dystopian future books, and this was much like the rest of them. Exaggerated technology, brainwashed people, and freedoms being distorted. There’s even a mechanical dog/spider robot that chases down those who break the law, it reminded me of Snowcrash.
And like may other dystopian future stories, war looms in the background. Bradbury published this story in 1953, and I can’t help up think of Orwell’s 1984 which was published in 1949. Both are fearful accounts of a world they feared would come.
Has it? I don’t know.
If you’ve seen the movie The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington then you’ve seen a familiar perspective of our fear of knowledge and ideas. Ideas are contagious, they infect the minds and hearts of people all around the world. Ideas can’t be squashed and can’t be controlled. In the world of Fahrenheit 451, ideas can only be forgotten.
Washington in The Book of Eli plays a blind man who has memorized the Bible using braille. People covet knowing what he knows and attempt to extract what’s inside his brain. But they know they can’t because those words and ideas can only be shared.
How far away are we from the realities that these fiction stories present?
What was Bradbury observing about his own world that led him to create and imagine a world like that of Fahrenheit 451? A world where freedom of speech could get you killed, a world where learning is forbidden, and a world where war is on the brink but the people are clueless until it’s too late.
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Overall I read through this story relatively quickly and thought it was generally a good book. I can see why it’s popular but for me, it doesn’t stand up against some of Orwell or Huxley.
The emphasis on books was fascinating comparing it to the world we live in now. What are books in the world of the internet? Maybe we will get rid of them someday, finding reasons for why they should be transferred digitally. Then, unannounced to us, the war we fear will become a reality and the digital platforms we trust will be gone.
Whoever has the books, will have the power to change the world.
Maybe the world is going down the dystopian path, maybe it isn’t. One thing is for sure, the world looks closer to this then it ever has.
