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Fahrenheit 451

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This article is about the novel. For the 1966 film adaptation, see Fahrenheit 451 (film). For the rock band of the same name, see Fahrenheit 451 (band).
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian fiction novel by Ray Bradbury. It is set in a world in which the reading of books is banned and critical thought is suppressed; the central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this case, means "book burner"). 451 degrees Fahrenheit (about 233°C) is stated as "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns ...". It was originally published as a shorter novella The Fireman in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The novel was made into a movie in 1966 by François Truffaut. In addition to the movies, there have been at least two BBC Radio 4 dramatisations, both of which follow the book very closely.

The novel reflects several major concerns of the time of its writing: what Bradbury has called "the thought-destroying force" of McCarthyism in the 1950s; the burnings of books in Nazi Germany starting in 1933; Stalin's suppression of authors and books in the Soviet Union; and the horrible consequences of an explosion of a nuclear weapon. "I meant all kinds of tyrannies anywhere in the world at any time, right, left, or middle," Bradbury has said.

One particularly ironic circumstance is that, unbeknownst to Bradbury, his publisher released a censored edition in 1967 that eliminated the words "damn" and "hell" for distribution to schools. Later editions with all words restored include a "Coda" from the author describing this event and further thoughts on censorship and "well-meaning" revisionism.

Contents

Plot summary

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[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The story takes place sometime in the twenty-first century, in an America which has turned hedonistic and rabidly anti-intellectual. Books are banned, with the penalty of confinement in a mental hospital and having your house, books and all, burnt by "firemen". In the government's, and consequently the society's, opinion, books contain problems and conflicting theories, causing people to be anxious, sad or angry. They are disruptive to society and full of nonsense. According to the authorities, Benjamin Franklin was the first fireman and firemen have always burned books.

For ten years, the protagonist, Guy Montag, works with grim pleasure as a fireman, seemingly committed to the concept that books have nothing to say. The stench of kerosene in his nostrils and the spark in his eyes do little, however, to mask the loneliness he feels coming home to his wife, Mildred, a woman who, at all times, seeks self-stimulation in various forms, such as a miniature radio jammed in her ear at night, or the three wall TVs in the parlour, with their silly shows, lacking any sense or meaning.

At first, Guy is proud of his work. He thinks it is a fine job and parrots what he has been told by his superiors. Upon meeting Clarisse McClellan, a 17-year-old girl living in Montag's neighbourhood, who is considered abnormal because of her compassion and her simple interest in the world around her, his way of thinking changes. Unlike Guy, she pays attention to nature, which "normal" people don't care about anymore. She makes him reflect on life and his work. She poses essential questions to him, asking him if he is happy, and why things are the way they are. This results in Guy beginning to think about his situation. Clarisse dies early in the story and acts as a catalyst to Guy's transformation. Guy develops from a loyal servant of the state's ideology to a self-confident human being with his own free will.

Guy's wife Mildred has lost her free will, self-confidence, and the desire to question societal norms, preferring to sit in her parlour and watch TV. She seems to be happy, but early in the book Montag finds her dying from an overdose of sleeping pills. Her suicide attempt belies her outward self confidence. Because she is constantly distracting herself with broadcast entertainment, Montag feels estranged from her.

Montag's descent into radicalism is triggered by the defiant self-immolation of an elderly book hoarder. She refuses to allow the firemen to burn her house down, and instead strikes the match herself. Montag is deeply disturbed and upset by the incident. He becomes curious as to why the woman considered books important enough to die for, and does much soul-searching. Eventually, he begins to read. He wonders if he could ever do his job again, both because of the old woman's death, and because of his new interest in books.

Beatty, the Captain of his fire station, comes to Montag's house because of Montag's suspicious absence from work. He explains the history of the fire brigade and why society has become so vehemently opposed to literature. It is implied that Beatty is well-read and already knows that Montag has at least one book. Beatty mentions in passing that once in his career every fireman wants to know what books say, and if a fireman takes a book with him, he has 24 hours to burn it, or the fire house comes and burns it for him.

Montag is unconvinced by Beatty's speech and looks up Faber, a retired English professor whom he met a year earlier. Montag visits Faber and he tells him of his problems. Faber advises Montag against violent protest, but also acknowledges his own cowardice in allowing society to become so anti-intellectual. They decide to copy books and plant them in firemen's houses, to sabotage the fire brigade. Faber gives Montag a two-way "seashell" (a small audio device resembling an earbud) with which he will be able to listen in on Montag's conversations and advise him on what to say. When Montag arrives at the fire house, he hands Beatty his Bible. Beatty attempts to test him, by quoting from several books, but they are interupted by a call. When they arrive at the house to be burned, Montag recognizes it as his own.

Beatty forces Montag to prove his loyalty by burning down his own house. When he further antagonizes him, and threatens to find Faber, Montag points the flamethrower at him and burns him alive. As Montag escapes, he knocks out his fellow firemen, then flees for his life, pursued by a relentless Mechanical Hound. The robot is armed with a syringe filled with a lethal dose of narcotics, and tracks Montag by scent. The pursuit is aired live on TV.

After warning Faber to destroy all traces of his presence at Faber's house and flee the city, Montag himself flees for the countryside. The police eventually lose his trail and are forced to kill an insomniac in place of Montag, so that the viewing public can enjoy a good show (this is a reference to a short story of Bradbury's "The Pedestrian", which features a similarly insomniac gentleman who walks for pleasure and is detained by the police when he gives this as reason).

Montag, having washed off his scent in a local river, floats downstream and meets a group of tramps — mostly older men — who, to Montag's astonishment, have been expecting him. Every one of them has committed entire books to memory, to share with those who would listen, until books will be allowed again. They themselves burned the books they read to prevent them from being discovered. Amongst them is Granger, the leader of the group. He has a talk with Granger about the fact that it is necessary for the mythical phoenix to be consumed by fire when it gets old and complacent, for it to be born again.

The city which Montag has just fled is soon bombed. It is implied that the bombs are nuclear weapons. Montag and the tramps return to the city, to help reconstruct society with their knowledge.

Characters in \"Fahrenheit 451\"

"The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the fire house. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber padded paws.
Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine."
Spoilers end here.

Allusions/references from other works

The title of Bradbury's book has become a well-known byword amongst those who oppose censorship, in much the way George Orwell's 1984 has (although not to the same extent). As such, it has been alluded to in dozens of later contexts, amongst them the ACLU's 1997 whitepaper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning? and Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (Bradbury objected to its allusion of his work [link]).

Accuracy as a vision of the future

Several aspects of the fictional future depicted in the novel have become reality in the late 20th and early 21st century:

:But the following phenomena have not yet occurred (and Bradbury argues that the purpose of his fiction is to keep such things from happening):

References

ISBNs

See also

Further reading

External links

 

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