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Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Start date: September 1, 2017

Finish date: September 30, 2017

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: Winner Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Poll - September 2017
[close] Winner Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Poll - September 2017

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What Members Thought

Oct 02, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, fiction, sci-fi, american-20th-c, hugo-awards-winner, dystopian, novels

I think this is my second reading of this classic, but it is hard to remember so far back. In any case, it is an incredible story, so well-written and so gripping. The ideas of firemen creating fires to destroy books is poignant especially given GQP tendencies in red states such as Florida at the moment. Bradbury's fable is about trying to control free thought by demonizing literature and unfortunately never gets old. It was written a while after Brave New World and a few short years before 1984 I think this is my second reading of this classic, but it is hard to remember so far back. In any case, it is an incredible story, so well-written and so gripping. The ideas of firemen creating fires to destroy books is poignant especially given GQP tendencies in red states such as Florida at the moment. Bradbury's fable is about trying to control free thought by demonizing literature and unfortunately never gets old. It was written a while after Brave New World and a few short years before 1984 but clearly is in the same vein and perhaps the most beautifully written of the three. I was truly impressed by the poetry in his narration. And his iconic character Guy Montag!

Some favorite passages:
"Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White
people don't feel good about Uncle Toms Cabin. Burn it. Some-
one's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The
cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag.
Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the in-
cinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too.
Five minutes after a person is dead he's on his way to the Big
Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the coun-
try. Ten minutes after death a man's a speck of black dust. Let's
not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them.
Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.

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 film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels
and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom,
and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged
by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head
for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in
the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker
place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the
streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing
chicken' and knock hubcaps. I guess I'm everything they say I
am, all right. 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. Do you notice how
people hurt each other nowadays?"

From Montag's mentor, Beatty:
"What more easily explained and natural? With school
turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers,
snatchers, fiers, 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 re-
citing 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. Sol A book is a loadey
fun in the house nest door. Bum it. Take the shot from the
Weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the tar.
get of the well-read man? Me? I wont stomach them for a min
hite. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all
over the world you were correct in your assumption the othe
night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes,
They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind
the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being in
ferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That's you, Montag,
and that's me.

More from Beatty:
"There was a girl next door," he said, slowly. "She's gone now,
I think, dead. I can't even remember her face. But she was differ-
ent. How-how did she happen?"
Beatty smiled. "Here or there, that's bound to occur. Clarisse
McClellan? We've a record on her family. We've watched them
carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't
rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home
environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why
we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now
we're almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false
alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never
found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; antisocial. The girl?
She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subcon-
scious, I'm sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didnt
want to know how a thing was done, but why...The poor girl is better off dead!

Montag walked in silence. "Millie, Millie," he whispered
"Millie."
"What?"
"My wife, my wife. Poor Millie, poor, poor Millie. I can't
remember anything. I think of her hands but I don't see them
doing anything at all. They just hang there at her sides or they
lie there on her lap or there's a cigarette in them, but that's all."
Montag turned and glanced back.
What did you give to the city, Montag?
Ashes.
What did the others give to each other?
Nothingness.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. "Everyone must
leave something behind when he dies, my grandfäther said. A
child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall but of f
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 of that home, wupe,
you're there, It doesnt matter what you do, he said, so long as
you change something from the way it was before you take your hands away
it into something thats like you after you take your hand away
The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and at
gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just
as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there,
lifetime."

The pessimism is probably best understood in the aftermath of WWII as Bradbury wrote this in 1945:
remember. Montag clung to the earth. I remember. Chie
ago. Chicago a long time ago. Millie and I. That's where wener
remember now. Chicago. A long time ago,
The concussion knocked the air across and down the rivet,
turned the men over like dominoes in a line, blew the water in
lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees above them
mourn with a great wind passing away south. Montag crushed
himself down, squeezing himself small, eyes tight. He blinked
once. And in that instant saw the city, instead of the bombs, in
the air. They had displaced each other. For another of those im-
possible instants the city stood, rebuilt and unrecognizable, taller
than it had ever hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built
it, erected at last in gouts of shattered concrete and sparkles of
torn metal into a mural hung like a reversed avalanche, a million
colors, a million oddities, a door where a window should be, a
top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over
and fell down dead.
The sound of its death came after.

A must-read. ...more

46 likes · Like · see review

Jan 02, 2015 Caroline rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

THIS book is constantly being compared to Brave New World (which, in case you missed it is MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE BOOK!) and this is going to sound mean but it just felt like a budget version. Like this is the slightly shittier version of a phenomenal story. Before I get comments correcting or chastising me:
- Yes I know the stories are entirely different. I was merely drawing comparisons between the books and their themes.
- No I did not think this book was shit.. it just feels kind of meh when co ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Dec 01, 2020 Jess Penhallow rated it liked it · review of another edition

This wasn't quite what I expected it to be. I was expecting a political dystopia akin too 1984 but this was actually far more surreal and confusing.

The reader is thrown straight into the main character's life and bits of exposition are drip-fed throughout but I didn't feel like this was happening at a rate where I could properly follow the plot. There were some fantastic intense moments (view spoiler) but I found the plot jumping around betwee ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2016 Phil J rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fantasy-sci-fi, classic

Third time reading. Still classic. I read a lot of books when I was twelve, and I'm grateful that this was one of them. ...more

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Jul 11, 2017 Kate Hardman rated it really liked it

I loved it! But the end was a bit disappointing. It felt a slightly wishy washy, lots of speculation about what might be going on back in the city, what might be going on with his wife. Lots of thoughts and ideas and not a great deal of anything happening. Aside from that, it was a wonderful book.

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Apr 04, 2017 Carol rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I think I may have read this a zillion years ago, but it wasn't worth re-reading, IMO. I didn't find it at all gripping, and although the writing was poetic, there wasn't much of a plot. It's funny how Bradbury was able to predict the ubiquity of television and the decline of philosophical thought, but thought the future would be full of people who spent all their time outdoors engaged in physical activity. ...more

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