"Fahrenheit 451"

Yes, another dystopia book

My education in classic dystopian literature continues¹ with Ray Bradbury's classic novel about a society incapable of recognizing its own degeneration. Yes, the book is about censorship, but it's also about what it means for something to be important as opposed to immediate, and remains surprisingly relevant today, over sixty years after its 1953 publication.

Minor spoilers below.

"Fahrenheit 451" follows fireman Guy Montag through a few weeks of his life. That's fireman, not firefighter. In this future, the firemen don't save buildings: they burn books. At the start of the novel, he loves his job –

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

– until the day he meets Clarisse, a young girl who forces him to consider his role in a society that manages not to see the world it has created –

"I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, 'Oh yes!' he'd say, 'that’s grass!' A pink blur! 'That's a rose garden!' White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles per hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn't that funny, and sad, too?"

– and has forgotten substance and meaning. It's a world where people don't do, or even discuss, important things –

"People don't talk about anything... No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else."

– but prefer their endless distractions, such as the seashell radios that jabber continually into their ears, the endlessly banal television programs, forming "real" relationships with fake families. But all of it can't quite drown out the roar of the jets flying overhead, always threatening nuclear annihilation.

In one of the book's pivotal scenes, Fire Chief Beatty describes how this society came to be. A taste:

"People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? 'I want to be happy,' people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these."

"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. Let him forget there is such a thing as war."

"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. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of facts they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Moralizers could say much the same today.

The unabridged version I read² includes the Afterword and Coda that Bradbury wrote for the book's 1979 reprinting. Since the original publication, editors had gradually replaced a swear here, a passage there, deleted a scene that wouldn't quite play well with modern sensibilities – in short, they effectively censored a book about censorship. Irony!

As Bradbury said, "There is more than one way to burn a book." The coda's closing lines forcefully argue against this sort of meddling:

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you.

Chills.

My highly subjective rating: a masterful novel that will remain relevant for as long as people turn away from aspiration toward apathy, and silence discomfort with distraction.


1 Actually a total coincidence, promise! I don't have the power to control when library items come off hold, unfortunately. (back)

2 The 2005 Blackstone Audio unabridged audiobook, magnificently narrated by Christopher Hurt. He turned the dialogue into pure poetry. (back)