From 1953 to 2023 – oh, how times haven’t changed.

Seriously, did Ray Bradbury peer into a crystal ball while writing his dystopian classic, Fahrenheit 451? It sure seems like he did.

Because the world Bradbury foresaw back in 1953 is so eerily reminiscent of our world today. The book burning, the technology overload, the brainwashing and oppression of independent thought – it’s all very familiar.

There is much to unpack. I could spend days dissecting the themes, symbolism, and how the novel is a mirror image of today’s society, 70 years after it was written. But I won’t do it here, as no one really wants to read a lengthy dissertation on Goodreads. I’ll instead leave my thoughts swirling in my head and voice them to my husband. He will listen, nod, and smile.

I am so grateful to my dear friend, Terrie Robinson, for nudging me in the direction of the audiobook of Fahrenheit 451. Performed by the talented actor, Tim Robbins, his incredible narration creates a memorable listening experience.

Now off I go to unplug the TV and power down my devices. It's time to read a book.

O livro é sensacional, mas não leiam a última nota do autor pra não se decepcionarem.

Compré este libro hace un par de días porque finalmente conseguí la edición que tanto buscaba (que dicho sea de paso, no es la misma que estoy reseñando), y en esa misma noche lo comencé con la idea de leer tan solo algunas páginas y luego continuarlo en otro momento. Lo que pasó en realidad fue que no pude bajar el libro en ningún momento, lo terminé en algunas horas completamente fascinada. Es difícil de explicar, pero este título ya representaba algo importante en mi vida sin haberlo leído y habiendo escuchado poco y nada del mismo, y cuando por fin pude disfrutarlo, sentí que redefinió algo profundo en mí como lectora. Principalmente expuso con mayor claridad ese vínculo que siento con la literatura, esa conexión, ese evidente escape de la realidad que representa para mí. Es impresionante lo que puede generar la lectura de un buen libro, y la cantidad de cosas que puede dejarle a uno.

El libro habla sobre la censura, sobre cómo limitar la mente, la creatividad y la capacidad del pensamiento así creando una "felicidad" artificial, vacua, a través del conformismo y de lo fácil. Ofrece una mirada sobre el mundo bajo el efecto que genera la carencia de los libros, de la lectura y la reflexión, y es sumamente sorprendente cuan acertado se torna todo. La prosa de Ray Bradbury embellece hasta la dramática resolución que se lleva a cabo con aquellos libros que han sido detectados por los bomberos. Una novela sublime que sin duda recomendaría a todos.

Q:
"It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan." (c)
Q:
"You laugh when I haven't been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I've asked you."
"You are an odd one... Haven't you any respect?"(c)
Q:
She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead.
(c)
Q:
"You think too many things," ...
"I rarely watch the 'parlor walls' or go to races or Fun Parks. So I've lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. " (c)
Q:
"Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?"
"No. Houses. have always been fireproof, take my word for it." (c)
Q:
"I've been an idiot all the way."
"We're used to that. (c)
A re-re-re-read. The waify Clarisse McClellan and the fiery Guy Montag. Neither had any chance.

The way I read this book 1st time (a long, long time ago, when the Pterodactyls were still flying around and the sea teemed with unnamed creatures), it felt like a story about wasteful people living in wasteful times: burning books, what an idiocy! Have they got nothing better to do with their time?

Another thought: ok, in this world of idiots, it's the firemen who burn stuff. Ok. Who fights fire then? Or have they extinguished all usage of fire, all lightning strikes, etc, along with their sanity? Did they fireproof their trees and grasses as well? And what's wrong with their plastic? The one that they fire-proof their houses with? In my experience it burns fine and deadly.

Two atomic wars? Winners? How come that they still have some clean air/water/etc? Whoa? Which planet did they have those wars on?

The charactes of dreamy qualities felt like just an afterthought but a grandiose one. They were so obviously cut off from their contemporaries, of which only the most brazen 'delinquents' could be their intellectual equals. Hmm, that's a bad situation for any MC to be in. Even for the library-cious one. Not just in some dystopia but for any book.

Another really quirky thing here is memory. Compare the wife's almost total lack of focus and memory and 'bums on the outside, libraries inside' abd who way things like this: '... now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. ... We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.' Well, all the best luck to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are going to need all of it and more in this hot new world.

Dreamy stuff:
Q:
The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. (c)
Q:
Her dress was white and it whispered. (c)
Q:
I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane (c) Uhhh. What if you never stop being those?
Q:
It was not the hysterical light of electricity but-what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. (c)
Q:
How like a mirror, too, her face.
Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? (c)
Q:
What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. (c)
Q:
"What are you up to now?"
"I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."
"I don't think I'd like that," he said.
"You might if you tried."
"I never have."
She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good."
"What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked.
"Sometimes twice." (c)
Q:
"I've got to go to see my psychiatrist now. They make me go. I made up things to say. I don't know what he thinks of me. He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers."...
"The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I'll show you my collection some day."
"Good."
"They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won't tell them what. I've got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall into my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?" (c)
Q:
My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days.
...
"What's going on?" Montag had rarely seen that many house lights.
"Oh, just my mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time-did I tell you?-for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're most peculiar." (c)
Q:
I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we
never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of filmteacher. That's not social to me at all. ... I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. (c)
Q:
I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. (c)

This would have been a very unpopular idea today. Most likely RB would've been forbidden to publish or gotten ostracised:
Q:
"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. ...
You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred. ...
Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too." (c)
Q:
Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen, often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. ...
Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. ... Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. ... Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. (c)

RB called out consumerism long before it became the new black:
Q:
If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms. We could do without a few things." (c)

RB called out the all-over simplification as the driver of the intellectual decline. Again, long before his time:
Q:
Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more." (c)
Q:
"School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?" (c)

Lovely ideas:
Q:
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. (c)
Q:
If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. (c)
Q:
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. (c)
Q:
"What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many
leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in
the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well read man? (c)
Q:
They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances. (c)
Q:
"It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think."
"That's sad... because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know."' (c)
Q:
... that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing. (c)
Q:
So long as the vast population doesn't wander about quoting the Magna Charta and the Constitution, it's all right. (c)
Q:
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. (c)
Q:
'Stuff your eyes with wonder, ...live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" (c)

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless."

Who would’ve thought that the most unsettling, hopeless world devoid of meaning would become a love letter to literature? Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life said Oscar Wilde, and of course, he was right, we can only aspire to be slightly as conscious as the writers who shape our future. Bradbury excels at creating an almost premonitory tale, where firemen stoke fires instead of preventing them, acting at night, for the anonymity and the spectacle. The burning bright lights contrast the deep obscurity of the night, as much as the beautiful imagery used to describe the fire contrasts the horrific action taking place.

Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine
Forewarnings aside, each passing day we are sadly heading to the society described in this story, maybe is not presenting itself in the form of TV walls or book destructing firemen, but ever more present social media and book banning are our contemporary threats.

"Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!"

In the age of endless (miss)information, the veracity of claims or news is unimportant, what really matters is to be up to date with them, which allows people with power and resources to control the narratives creating sheep-like herd who recognizes as truth and repeats it without thinking. Curiosity, imagination and even knowledge become side-characters as people try to obtain instantaneous forms of gratifications that are growing more ephemeral by the minute.

"Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending."

We must all be alike
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others said George Orwell in Animal Farm, which only demonstrates the hypocrisy of a government that declares that equality is important, but by equality they mean repression. In this sick society (whether the one on the book or the one on real life) a government that attempts to drain the individuality out of its people is extremely dangerous. Even more so, if it’s done with empty promises of happiness, because who doesn’t want to be happy? Who would want to feel inferior to anyone? Proclaiming that knowledge is elitist is an idle attempt to silence and control people. Thinking is dangerous, thoughts turn into actions into change into revolutions.

"If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn"

For a little while I’m not afraid
"Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."

There is a liberating feeling in breaking free of constrains, being disruptive with a cause, finally realizing that what you want and what is wanted out of you are two different things and you’re choosing you.

"Your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away."

If I could be remembered for something, I’d hope it is by bits and pieces of my favorite books.

Okay, so I wasn't sure about this one at all but it pulled me in from the first line to be honest and I'm glad to have read it and understood what messages it gave. It's not about just burning books and living a life where you are so damn busy to even think. It's so much more really.
It was an eye opener and it was something I knew-something we all know-but we don't really say it or even believe it.

We all live in this amazing world where we have so much to be grateful for, but we never are. We are so advanced in everything and yet we don't have time to appreciate a simple thing, a little beauty, some part of nature, or even ourselves. We are so damn absorbed in our activities that we don't even know why we're doing them. We don't have time for anyone and yet we have time for all the stupid stuff. We complain about everything and are thankful for nothing. We think only we know everything there is to know and yet we have no real knowledge of much. We think we're spending our time in the best possible way when we do know deep inside that we aren't. We do get time but we'd rather spend it doing something we are habitual to do than thinking whether we should be doing it at all. We have all the emotions and feels for the fictional world out there but we are stones when it comes to those who are close to us. Why is that? Why do we easily listen and respond to those who are virtually present than those who are right next to us? It's sad really, even pathetic.

Are You Happy?

Don't lie though-not even to yourself!

There is so much that could be said about this one, but I won't. I recommend you read it-and figure something out by yourself.

I wanna add something my friend Patty said about this:

"I think it’s hard for a book like this to have the impact it would have had in 1953. The world had just gone through WWII when Nazis did burn lots of books.

Since then, readers have had access to increasingly sophisticated science fiction, including my favourite old Twilight Zone. All the sci-fi movies, TV, and novels have made it harder to surprise or shock us.

His future of enormous TVs was predicted before much of the world had any TVs at all. Australia didn’t start TV broadcasting until 1956, I think!"

Maybe the dystopian elements aren't so credible, but I liked how this book made me think about books, about words.

Yes, we don't see many people burn books, but we see a lot who try to censor them. So, this book feels very important today.

It deserves its place next to 1984 and Brave new world.

You only need to get a couple of pages into “Fahrenheit 451” to realize this bookless future isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Sure, the dreaded textbooks might be a thing of the past, but it also means a life without Austen, Tolkien, and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. People are dull and thoughtless, the government has a creepy amount of control over the population, plumbers have replaced medics, and firemen no longer put out fires -- they start them.

In “Fahrenheit 451”: books are illegal, free thought is essentially prohibited, and activities are tightly organized. No, this isn't WWE: Smackdown -- this is the future. The weird part is that much of the restrictions on the general populous are self-enforced. The government has taken away the citizens’ ability to dissent, and veiled all dissatisfaction with a cheap version of "happiness," a.k.a. TV. The more I think about it, the more relevant this novel seems. It isn’t just about a book nerd’s nightmare, but Ray Bradbury is also writing about the effect mass media would have on the populace -- resulting in a populace that lost not just its interest in seeking the truth, but its ability to do so.

In this new age of fake news and internet conspiracy, this book is more chilling than ever because what we’re seeing in our reality is possibly Bradbury’s terrifying vision of the future playing out (just more slowly than he imagined). In the novel, Captain Beatty explains the sequence of events: Television and sports shortened attention spans, and books began to be abridged and truncated in order to accommodate those shorter attention spans. At the same time, small groups of people complained about language and concepts in books that were now offensive, and the firemen were assigned to destroy books in order to protect people from concepts they would be troubled by. A little close to home? Things are certainly nowhere near that bad right now -- and yet, the seeds are clearly there.

“Fahrenheit 451” goes far beyond the exaggerated concept of firemen burning books to destroy knowledge -- it’s a succinct and frighteningly accurate analysis of precisely how our society could collapse without a single shot being fired, and a dark mirror of our modern age where unchallenging entertainment is available to us at all times, on devices we carry with us at all times, ready and waiting to drown out any input we don’t want to hear… Thank God we still have books though!

um what was this? boring. HORRIBLY difficult to read.

I get the idea of the books, and the author hates TV and all the techno stuff, but this could have been written more clearly. I was interested in the first part, like it made sense—Clarisse, Mildred, and Montag trying to figure out his whole life—but then, at 50% onwards, I was just sleep reading this.
The writing was so confusing at all times, full of metaphoric terms that could have many other meanings! The ending was disappointing, the climax was so quickly done, and the war and whoop! I reached the end.

*Sighs* Not a very good book to start for classics, but yeah, this was just boring.

________________________

uhuh.. yup, I also never saw this day coming.
me... reading a classic. ~surreal~

Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a novel that transcends it's dystopian theme and delivers its cautionary message in a timeless fashion, what made this story compelling in 1953 remains provocative.

It is a strident call to arms, a warning siren of darkness always on the perimeter.

Critics have tried to make more of this, and certainly it is an archetypal work, but I think its simplicity is its great strength - it is fundamentally about book burning, literally and metaphorically. A powerful allegory that also works well as a prima facie argument against censorship and a good science fiction novel all by itself.

Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context - and I can see that (and in an age of Vine and Twitter this message is all too relevant), but for me the image of the ironic fireman burning books is the endearing story.

This is a book that everyone should read at least once.

**** 2021 reread -

This could be an annual reread, I was again captivated by Bradbury's language and vision.

Akin to Orwell's 1984 in its cautionary dystopia, this is more fantastic and serves best as allegory for complacency, conformism and the deterioration of critical thought. A reader of both classics may also draw a comparison between 1984's O'Brien and 451's Beatty. Both antagonists, like Milton's Satan, recognize the evil of their design but move forward regardless and with a recklessness born of misanthropy.

One symbol that was ubiquitous in the novel was that of hands. Montag blames his hands for beginning his treason by taking books and later it is his hands that commits the murders, and still later, by contrast, Guy thinks of hands as building and creating rather than burning and destroying.

*** 2023 reread -

Still an excellent book, timeless in its message, and as relevant as ever.

I noticed in my reread of Childhood's End and Foundation, all three books published within years of each other, and significantly only a few years removed from battling global fascism, that all three of these SF masterpieces address a dehumanizing effect of authority and technology.

This time I paid close attention to Montag's relationships with the other characters. From his wife, to Clarisse, to Beatty, and then to Faber and the disenfranchised hobos, Montag is our guide for the dystopia he lives through as well as the scenes of hope and for the final denouement.

Bradbury's prose is a treasure.

The Fahrenheit scale of temperature establishes 451 degrees as “the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns”, Ray Bradbury tells us – having consulted with a Southern California fire chief to get an exact figure. And that bit of thermometric trivia gives Fahrenheit 451 (1953), one of the greatest works of dystopian science fiction ever written, its title.

The Illinois-born Bradbury relocated to the Los Angeles area and built his literary career there – at first, churning out science-fiction stories written on a rented typewriter at UCLA’s Powell Library. He was known for imparting a sense of wonder regarding the ways in which science might change human life in the near future – with, always, a cautionary note to the effect that science would not by itself resolve the flaws of human beings, either individually or in the societies that they form.

Such cautions and warnings are very much in evidence in Fahrenheit 451. The book takes place in an American society that is materially prosperous and spiritually empty. People watch TV constantly, on wall-sized screens. All books are banned, on grounds that they make people discontent. Firehouses are staffed by firemen whose job is to burn books, wherever they are found – along with the homes in which the books are found.

The novel’s protagonist is a fireman named Guy Montag. Montag is German for “Monday.” The use of the German language would have reminded the book’s original readers not only of the recently-destroyed Nazi dictatorship, but also of the then-current East German authoritarian state. (The country that called itself the “German Democratic Republic” and claimed to be a “worker’s state” spent part of 1953, the year of this novel’s publication, quashing a workers’ uprising.) And Guy Montag’s name signals to the reader more generally that this man is a Monday-morning guy – not exceptional in any way, except in the decisions that he will eventually make.

At first, Montag asks no questions about the work he does, taking it for granted. But one of his neighbours, a teenaged girl named Clarisse (as in “clarity”), starts gently asking him about the work he does. The initial discontent that Montag starts to feel intensifies when he and his fellow firemen go to burn a house full of books; the woman at the house lights a match herself, driving the firemen out of the house that they have drenched in gasoline, and then she incinerates herself with her books.

A conversation with Montag’s emotionally detached wife Mildred captures the spiritual coldness and emptiness of the society generally. While Mildred watches her wall-screen and pretends to listen, Montag tries in vain to convey what he has been through:

“Aren’t you going to ask me about last night?” he said.

“What about it?”

“We burnt a thousand books. We burnt a woman.”

“Well?”

The parlor was exploding with sound.

“We burnt copies of Dante and Swift and Marcus Aurelius.”

“Wasn’t he a European?”

“Something like that.”

“Wasn’t he a radical?”

“I never read him.”

“He was a radical.” (p. 50)

Montag starts clandestinely reading books on his own, and eventually befriends a defrocked academic named Faber. A particularly suspenseful moment in the book occurs when Montag goes on an espionage mission into the fire station, wearing in his ear a tiny microphone given him by Faber.

Fire-Captain Beatty, who clearly knows that Montag has been reading, “put his hand to one side, palm up, for a gift. Montag put the book in it. Without even glancing at the title, Beatty tossed the book in the trash basket and lit a cigarette” (p. 105).

Beatty, seemingly in a humorous manner, starts baiting Montag, quoting many literary works in a manner that shows that Beatty, the fire-captain who oversees the book-burning firemen, is himself an exceptionally well-read individual. Beatty tells Montag, “What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives” (p. 107).

Meanwhile Faber, speaking through the hidden microphone in Montag’s ear, warns Montag against Beatty’s totalitarian temptations, advising Montag to “remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom – the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority” (p. 108).

Forced by a crisis moment to leave the city, Montag goes out into the country and makes some new friends – a group of disheveled-looking people who have their own plans for resisting the regime. I would imagine that most people reading this review already know exactly how this group of people, living out in the woods beyond the railroad tracks, is resisting. But I will forbear from going into specifics.

One of Montag’s new friends, a man named Granger, points out that “you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last” (p. 153). Granger’s statement about the world blowing up conveys the nuclear-war anxiety of the Cold War times in which Fahrenheit 451 was written – and, at the same time, offers a cautiously optimistic look ahead toward a better future where democratic values of freedom of thought might once again prevail.

When Bradbury was writing Fahrenheit 451, the main threats to freedom of thought in the United States centered around the nationwide anti-communist scare then being fomented by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his allies on the House Un-American Activities Committee. Forty years ago, some on the far left called for bans against novels like Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) on grounds that these books were supposedly “racist” (they’re not). Today, far-right-wing organizations like “Moms for Liberty” maintain an Internet database of books they want banned from schools, libraries, and sometimes even bookstores – and in the main, these are books that focus on racism in the United States or examine the LGBTQ+ experience.

The common denominator, across place and time, is always the censors’ belief that they know, better than you, what you should read and write – and, by implication, what you should think. Such people always, whether they know it or not, embody a sensibility similar to that of this novel’s Fire-Captain Beatty, who says to Montag at one point in Fahrenheit 451 that

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. (p. 58)

Against Beatty’s bland advocacy of totalitarian conformity, we can set Montag’s declaration that “Behind each of these books there’s a man [or woman]”. In other words, a book expresses the ideas of another person. We consider those ideas while reading a book. We may agree or disagree with the ideas in a book; but either way, our own thinking is enriched by engaging with the thoughts of someone else. Through reading and writing, we learn more about what we think, and about how we think and why. Perhaps it is for that reason that independent reading, with independent writing and thinking, is among the things that autocrats everywhere absolutely dread.

If you agree with Montag rather than Beatty on this count– and I would venture a guess that most people here on Goodreads do – then Fahrenheit 451 should be on your own reading list, as a vindication of your right to read and think for yourself.

A book, a flamethrower, and a very troubled mind.

In a dystopian future, firemen don't put out fires... they start it. Books, and freethinkers, are burned with a flamethrower without a seconds thought. Guy Montag, one of these incendiary firemen, after a series of events starts awakening from his long and blind indoctrination. To his horror, he finds an identity and a mind of his own. But in a completely monitored and subjugated society, thinking can cost your life. One single mistake and Guy may find himself on the other side of the flamethrower...

A very short novel, with a lot of feel of Orwell's 1984. A novel that emphasizes the value of written legacy, books, and free will. An interesting read, with lots of moments and quotations to remember, but somewhat far from the dazzling 1984 experience.

What I couldn't grasp was Bradbury's confusing way to describe things, not because of the vocabulary, but because of the phrasing. Several of them seemed incomprehensible, or incoherent. Maybe I just got one of those weird faulty electronic copies. Or maybe this was just a book that I may have been able to enjoy much more reading it in spanish. Maybe. Might try Martian Chronicles someday, in spanish.

**** Both movies fell kinda flat. Interesting, but not really enjoyable, and specially not 2018.
1966 - Definitely the most faithful to the book. Some important changes to the original plot, but welcomed ones. Unremarkable acting, at best. Decent effects, considering. Not necessarily a good film, but it does have some redeeming qualities.
2018 - It would be generous if said it has any redeeming qualities. Terribly unfaithful to the book. Besides the names, setting and *some* basic plot, everything else was changed. And not in a good way. Really nice effects though.

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n  PERSONAL NOTEn:
[1953] [159p] [Dystopian] [3.5] [Conditional Recommendable]
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★★★☆☆  Fahrenheit 451. [3.5]
★★★☆☆  The Martian Chronicles.
★★★★☆  The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl.
★★★☆☆  I See You Never. [3.5]
★★★☆☆  The Crowd.
★★☆☆☆  Embroidery. [2.5]

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Un libro, un lanzallamas, y una mente muy perturbada.

En un futuro distópico, los bomberos no apagan incendios... sino que los inician. Los libros, y los librepensadores, son quemados con lanzallamas sin mediar palabra. Guy Montag, uno de estos bomberos incendiarios, tras una serie de eventos empieza a despertar de su largo y ciego adoctrinamiento. Para su horror, encuentra una identidad y pensamiento propio. Pero en una sociedad completamente vigilada y subyugada, pensar puede costar la vida. Un simple error y Guy podría encontrarse del otro lado del lanzallamas...

Una novela muy corta, con mucho feel de 1984 de Orwell. Una novela que resalta el valor de los libros, el legado de la palabra, y del pensamiento libre. Una lectura interesante, con varias citas y momentos para el recuerdo, pero algo lejos de la genial experiencia que fue leer 1984.

Lo que no pude digerir es la forma enrevesada que tiene Bradbury para describir las cosas. Reiteradas frases me resultaron incoherentes o irrelevantes. Tal vez me topé con una de esas raras malas copias digitales. O quizás éste sea uno de esos libros que tal vez hubiera podido disfrutar mucho más leyéndolo en español. Tal vez. Intentaré con Crónicas Marcianas algún día, en español.

**** Ambas peliculas me cayeron sosas. Interesantes, pero no muy disfrutables, especialmente no 2018.
1966 - Definitivamente la más fiel al libro. Algunos cambios importantes a la trama original, pero bien recibidos. Actuación regular, como mucho. Efectos decentes, considerando. No necesariamente una buena película, pero tiene algunas buenas cualidades.
2018 - Sería generoso decir que tiene alguna buena cualidad. Terriblemente infiel al espíritu del libro. Aparte de los nombres, contexto y *algo* de la trama original, todo fue cambiado. Y no de una buena manera. Muy buenos efectos, eso sí.

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n  NOTA PERSONALn:
[1953] [159p] [Distopía] [3.5] [Recomendable Condicional]
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