Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

 

                Fahrenheit 451

                   The temperature at which books burn

"And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I’d never even thought that thought before"

Somehow, this book climbed up the ladder of my "best books ever in existence" list and I mean, as it should. My biggest takeaway was the fact that even though this book was written around some time in 1950's, it perfectly grasped the world we are living in right now: A fake reality, where you cannot distinguish what happiness is and what is not. 

In this future dystopian world that Ray Bradbury takes us through, books are a supposed menace to humanity. This eventually leads to the government banning books as it attempts to eliminate the source of complexity. Apparently it ensures happiness.

Ok.

Moving on to the main part of course, firefighters have a different task completely. They set things on fire, more specifically, they set books on fire. (side note: no one needs firefighters when an actual fire is out as the houses are fire-proof). And so comes our main character, Guy Montag, ( a firefighter if you haven't guessed yet) troubled with his life. Conflicted about his desire for reading books yet his job literally requires him to burn them. 

When someone questions him whether he's actually happy or not, he realizes that he doesn't really know the answer for that question.

“He was not happy...He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”

This realization was the first step.

Montag's wife was one of the most interesting character to me. Because like I said, this book was written way before technology came into full advance, and yet eerily enough, she represents us in every single aspect. We see in the beginning of the book that she overdoses on sleeping pills, as she loses herself to her televised "family". Digital addiction. Over the course of the book we see that in order to not feel any emotion at all, she numbs herself every minute with her "family", listening to her thimble radio, or driving her beetle at top speed to stifle any negative emotions. She mistakes her numbness to contentment and hence accidentally overdoses on pills. We see that when medical aid is rushed to her, they are barely surprised, as if it was totally normal.

And to put it simply: they live in a world of indifference, no one cares, nothing matters.

I wont be going any more deep into the book, but we see that by the climax of the book, Montag becomes a rebel. Going from a book hater, he goes on to save the last literary pieces he finds, because he wants to understand what's wrong with society. And maybe he eventually does.

"It’s not the books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the ‘parlor families’ today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not."

                                                 Think while its still legal