Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

What did I expect going into this book? I knew it had something to do with book banning and burning but I didn’t know much else.

Overall, it’s a really good story, well told in terms of plot and use of language. It’s a bit strange because it feels dated to the time it was written, 1953, due to some of the terminology or ideas – the wives who stay home and just watch T.V., medicating themselves with sleeping pills, and how almost everyone is smoking.

At the same time, it feels terribly relevant today with the imagery of people watching reality television and sports instead of engaging with each other or giving themselves time to think about and research ideas.

I started listening to the book on audio and I think that may have been a mistake. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is read by Ray Bradbury himself. In a way, it’s nice to have the author, and such an iconic one at that, reading his own work. But it’s really terrible listening to him. His speech is not clear a lot of the time and it’s just unpleasantly taxing trying to follow what he is saying while I’m driving in the car. I don’t recommend the audio. I got the ebook on Kindle but his voice was kind of stuck in my head by that point.

It was a shorter book than I expected. Only 46,118 words, I found out later. Even the audio was only five discs. There was a sixth disc in the container but the book ended on the fifth disc.

The main character, Montag, is a fireman. But fireman don’t put out fires in this place and time. They are called only when a stash of books is suspected. They go to search out and burn the books, houses having been made fire proof. The people who live there are either sent to an insane asylum or jail.

The premise is that the ideas contained in books just make people depressed and confused. But getting rid of the books doesn’t seem to have helped as the suicide rate continues to rise.

Montag has his world shaken up by his own wife’s possible attempted suicide. Did she mean to take all the pills or not? Also, the appearance and then disappearance of a young woman who asks a lot of questions, Clarisse. But we keep seeing Montag look at a vent grill in his house, and something is hidden there. Apparently Montag has had questions for a while.

As I said, it’s a fast read, strong on action and some interesting imagery, and a whole lot of questions. I definitely would recommend it and am glad I read it.

"Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents."
"So that's what I am."
"There's some of it in all of us."