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Summary Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Ray Bradbury
Writing style
Third person narrator, very detailed descriptive, clear insides about Montag’s thoughts and internal monologue
Poetic and lyrical -> The text, while reading, gets rhythmic (rimes sometimes, has a flow)
Repeating and counting constantly
A tic he has, I suppose because with that he remembers and goes through over what just happened. To list the events and numbering them in the order of their occurrence helps to process them.
Symbol, Fire
For Montag first: destruction and evil. But then it warms him and is his only light source. For the others, Beatty: It cleans, is good and makes life easier, destroys responsibility and consequences.
Blood
Mildred, whose true self has been irreversibly lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh blood. Replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her. Montag often “feels” his most revolutionary thoughts welling and circulating in his blood. Very much alive compared to his wife.
Biblical references
Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine. -> Like Jesus did with water to prove him being the saviour of these lost souls.
The last line of the book, “When we reach the city,” implies a strong symbolic connection between the atomic holocaust of Montag’s world and the Apocalypse of the Bible.
Why did books get banned?
People increasingly went for simplified forms of entertainment. Technology took an ever- quickening pace. Books, however, threatened to damage this ideal of happiness by introducing unnecessary complexity and disagreement into people’s lives. Books were feared because they brought confusion and discontent. What began as a thing of social evolution was eventually turned into a law , with the government banning books and enforcing the ban through firemen.
Themes:
- Entertainment and satisfaction Mildred can’t live without having her mini radio in her ear or watching funny shows in the “parol” (living room) on a large screen. When she meets her friends, they like to talk about the shows they saw, and even reunite to watch them. To sleep they need pills, else they don’t rest. Society’s collective addiction to entertainment. When Montag read a poem to Mildred’s friends she starts to cry and breaks down, because she heard bitter truth but can’t start something with it.
“People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation?
- Beatty
- Technology’s innovation The story’s main problem of future societies. It replaces the reading. Gives quick and only satisfaction. The fast cars, wall to wall screens, and the ear thimbles. The cars are so fast that billboards have to be huge to be seen. On the other side it is a destructive tool. People get runover by fast cars and their reckless drivers. Clarisse dies that way. The hound, a mechanical bird, built to haunt lawbreakers and kill them. This bird already sensed Montag before, as if he could see his insides. -> it doesn’t only follow orders it also thinks for itself.
- Ignorance / Americas Image “We need to be really bothered once in a while… about something important, about something real?” – Montag to his wife. The ignorance of serious problems and his feelings towards them, is big. “We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1960. Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? … The world is starving, but we’re well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play?
The ever-present threat of atomic war maintains an atmosphere of anxiety.
- Attention span / Routine At the beginning, he gets stressed from the long pauses between the talk with Clarisse. After she dies his routine got disturbed, he was used to meeting her every night. Also, the wife can’t keep up listening her husband talking about his struggle. As soon as her attention is caught by her phone ringing. The wife also got good at lipreading since she worked at the “Seashell ear-thimbles”.
“The films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm. … Nineteenth-century man: slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, the cute again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary résumé. … Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers” “School is shortened, discipline relaxed”
No philosophies, histories, languages, or spelling. “Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work”
School The lessons they have are mostly sports and TV class, transcription history or painting, or are taught by film-teacher. The students don’t ask questions anymore, the answers just get shoved in them. They don’t question and think for themselves, they just get the quick answer with no extras These lessons run them so ragged by the end of the day they can’t do anything but go to bed, to fun parks to bully people, wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place, or simply go racing. (Montag’s wife also races with her car to ease her stress, and smashes dogs or other animals for fun)
Moral of the story
The technology advantage took the hard work away and made life easier and quick. It observes and controls (hound to lawbreakers) a lot of what we do. The last thing that is in our control is our attention and focus. Direct it well.
Live the life and don’t just react. Create rather than consume. Leave some change behind before you die. Have the most impact you can to your fellow people. Leave a print.
