"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
Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository | Author's Website
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."
