Keeping It Classy | Fahrenheit 451

"Keeping It Classy" features reviews I write based solely on classic books.  Included in this section are some of my all-time favorite novels, including To Kill A Mocking Bird, The Outsiders and 1984.  Read these and more here.

In keeping with my love of dystopian novels, Fahrenheit 451 was the perfect classic book to kick off my Rory Gilmore Challenge.

Title: Fahrenheit 451  
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Ballantine Books  
Publication Date: 1953 
Pages: 159  
Genre: Classic, Science Fiction, Dystopian
Source: Library
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Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...

The system was simple.  Everyone understood it.  Books were for burning...along with the house in which they were hidden.

Guy Montag enjoyed his job.  He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames...never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.

Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think...and Guy Montag suddenly realizes what he had to!

"Fahrenheit 451: the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns..."

The first thing to point about about this book is the fact that it was first published in 1953, around the McCarthy era.  For those of you who may not know, the McCarthy era was a time when thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers, and became the subject of intense and aggressive investigations and questionings.

After his book was published, Bradbury confessed in an interview that his motives for writing Fahrenheit 451 stemmed from his concerns about censorship and book burning that were occurring at the time.  

Over 50 years laster, and this book is still relevant to us.  With the heightened levels of war and fighting going on all over the world; Russia invading Ukraine, fighting in Sudan, protesters in Thailand, etc..., it's easy to image a world like the one depicted in this book. 

My Thoughts //

Banning and burning books sounds like a nightmare to any bookworm.  Can you image not being allowed to read books? *shudders at the thought*

Let me start off my saying how much I loved this book!  I loved the fact that Guy was willing to risk everything he had for the sake of a couple of books; his job, his home, his wife, even his life.  This man, who's job it once was to burn books, who comes from a culture that devalues reading and would rather ask "how" than "why," came to the realization that reading and literature is essential to a person's well-being.  So essential in fact, that he would even kill for it...This fact alone really spoke to me, and made me thankful of how easy it is to check-out books from a library nowadays.

The writing and ideas presented by Bradbury make for a good argument-it's easy to see why Bradbury was so concerned with the idea of censorship.  A mechanical hunting hound, firemen who actually start fires and the idea of 4 talking TV "walls" was also very creepy and very much dystopian-like.

One memorable part of the book was how these once-educated men (professors and writers), who were now refereed to as "hobos," memorized books.  I loved the idea of having an entire book being split up amongst all the people in a town, with each citizen knowing a different chapter.  Storing the words inside their heads until a time came for them to retell these stories.

I think one reason why this book really struck a chord with me is the fact that it made me realize how important books are to the overall health of society.  Books don't give us the answers or tell us "how" to do something.  Instead, books--good books--make us think and ask "why."  Good books--books that stay with you for years long after you have read them, books that change your point of view on the world or your way of thinking, these are the books Guy was willing to lay down his life for.

What is it about books, poetry and literature that make them so vital to us?  If not for everyone (believe it or not, there are actually SOME people who DON'T read for enjoyment), than for society as a whole.  Why is that though?  Books don't contain all the answers to life's questions, they are constantly contradicting each other and they can be entirely made up.  As the Fire Chief Captain Beatty mentioned to Guy, no two books agree with each other.  What it says in one books always contradicts in another.

So what is the power in books?  What is their allure?  What about them made Guy steal one in the first place.  Or made his wife's friend start crying when he read the poem "Dover Beach" aloud?  The simple answer is this:  Books make us feel.  

I loved this book.  The only real problem I had with the book was the pacing; it's actually quite short and is broken down into three parts.  The first two chapters come across as being slow and uneventful, while the last chapter is bursting with events and climaxes in just a short amount of pages and time.

Favorite Quotes //

"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 way."

"But 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."

"Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun."

"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."

Keeping It Classy | The Handmaid's Tale

"Keeping It Classy" features reviews I write based solely on classic books.  Included in this section are some of my all-time favorite novels, including To Kill A Mocking Bird, The Outsiders and 1984.  Read these and more here.

The Handmaid's Tale has all the makings for a perfect book- dystopian society, underground resistance, sex, lies and a female protagonist.  In between work and caring for my bunnies, I managed to read this book in just over two days.  I will admit though, initially, it took me a bit to get into the story.  It wasn't until about page 40 or so that I was able to really get into the book.

Title: The Handmaid's Tale 
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: McClelland and Stewart  
Publication Date: 1985 
Pages: 324  
Genre: Classic, Dystopian, Sci-Fiction
Source: Library
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Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she live and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played and potected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

Set in a futuristic dystopian society, The Handmaid's Tale follows the life of Offred, a handmaid within the Republic of Gilead.  Under the rule of a theocratic military dictatorship, Offred and other fertile females, serve as baby makers, reproducing with the country's commanders and officers.  Within this new society, men and women are treated differently, creating a hierarchy of the sexes, with the males of top.  All women, with the exception of "The Aunts" (who serve as educators of a sort), are prohibited from reading and writing, and all forms of the written word has been replaced with drawings and images.  Women such as Offred must also cover themselves by wearing modest clothing: too long and loose-fitting dresses that reach their ankles, gloves to cover their hands and head wings to prevent other from fully seeing their faces.  Males and females are also prohibited from talking to one another, and handmaids are only allowed out in pairs.  Offred doesn't care for the rules, and constantly dreams of the time from before, back when she was happily married and still had a daughter.

MY THOUGHTS:
The Handmaid's Tale is a perfect dystopian novel.  I loved how the whole idea of declining birth rates leading to a Christian-based dictatorship is actually a plausible event.  What made the book so good (and scary!) was the fact that something like this is totally capable of happening (more or less).  Of course, I don't think the US would ban reading and writing, we are much too proud of a country to appear uneducated or unintelligent.  

Margaret (the author) switches back and forth between Offred in the present-day, and Offred's memories of the past, which help offer readers an insight into the events that lead to Gilead's new society.  I loved the parts where Margaret mentioned the past, and thought that the way she presented information (in bits and pieces) is what makes the book so hard to put down once you're in totally into it.

The book is interesting in the fact that Margaret doesn't seem to care much for parenthesis and the proper dialogue format.  Instead, Margaret sneaks conversations into paragraphs, only sometimes including a "he said," "she said" to help distinguish between the speakers.  While overall, I really enjoyed this book, the whole lack of parenthesis was confusing at first, and took me a bit to adjust to (to be fair, there are a few instances in which Margaret included parenthesis for dialogue).

Another issue I found with the writing was the overly use of elaborate and run on sentences.  I kid you not, there were more than a handful of sentences that could have easily been broken up into two or three separate sentences.  I guess Margaret wasn't much of a fan of pauses and breaks.

*SPOILER:*

I liked how Margaret fast forwarded to a time after Gilead had collapsed, and had educators and scientist commenting on the Gilead-period.

I'm also not a huge fan of ambiguous and open-ended endings, in fact, I detest them.  I become so emotionally invested in characters that I want an ending that is satisfying.  I hated not knowing what happened to Offred or Luke, or knowing what happened to her husband and daughter.

*END SPOILER*

Despite these few issues, I really enjoyed the book and loved Offred's "I don't give a damn, I'm getting me some lotion and sex" attitude.

FAVORITE QUOTES:

"We were the people who were not in the papers.  We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print.  It gave us more freedom.  We lived in the gaps between the stories."

"You'll have to forgive me.  I'm a refugee from the past."