Fahrenheit 451

I read this book relatively recently, not at school or when I was in my twenties, but when I was in my late thirties. I had heard of the novel, and the concept of burning books was all-too familiar as I studied a module on Holocaust literature at university. However, the premise of Ray Bradbury’s novel, written in 1953, was so simple yet so powerful.

It echoes with our own reality today, as although books are not being burned, we are seeing the art of writing itself being "burned" or minimized by tools such as AI or social media. The… show more.

In the dystopian future that Bradbury creates, technology has eliminated the need for books.

We are not smarter in this future without history or literature, in fact, we are dumber, relying on meaningless entertainment to fill the intellectual void created by the written word’s eradication. Many successful science fiction authors are masters of the craft of writing, but Bradbury is on another level.

His stark vision of the future is propelled by ordinary characters living in extraordinary times, with each setting painted with beautiful prose that is both prophetic and thought provoking. The Dewey Decimal System has no hold on… show more.

Probably the most well-known books of classic sci-fi and a true masterpiece by Bradbury. Original, but with undertones of the same human traits of controlling the population, squashing individual thinking, and the escapism and magic of imagination through the pages of books.

Again, love for another human, and the excitement of babbling in forbidden pastimes are two of the themes of this book, as well as rising above the evil big brother.  

Fahrenheit 451 shows us that society can just be flat-out wrong about things.

It delivers that age-old lesson that just because everybody else believes something, it doesn’t mean that it’s true. Montag is looked at as a freak because he wants to save books at a time when everybody around him just wants to watch them burn. His journey reminds us of how vital knowledge is, and how important it is to preserve our right to learn and understand the truth about the world.

I’ve been an avid reader since the day I could form letters into words, so I… show more.

Indoctrination is the key in this very interesting book.

Western society permanently blames other cultures about brain-washing of the people, but refrains to talk or admit its own. I can see the religious indoctrination of our Christian Society; the money-minded, capital compelled, behavior of our masses. I can see the entertainment curtain pushing people away from books.

In this story about the future of humanity, the smoke enlightens and corrects the path to follow, using a simple tool: fire, to torch books and withdraw imagination to obtain a perfectly aligned and ignorant civilization.

But you, reader, as myself, will preserve… show more.

Firemen… who burn books? The premise of a censorship society grabbed me right away. Ray Bradbury’s wonderfully imaginative writing has stuck with me since I first read this novel in high school. While the book was written in the 1950s, these are issues that we continue to grapple with to this day. What makes this imagined future so frightening is how possible it seems.

Fahrenheit 451 is the best dystopian novel of the 1950s in which firemen work as enforcers burning books rather than putting out fires because a societal mob claims that the world’s unhappiness and discord are the result of ideas expressed in books. A woke mob that prefers to watch tv rather than read books has determined what is wrong with each book. Blacks are offended by Little Black Sambo so it must be burned. Whites are offended by Uncle Tom’s Cabin so it must be burned. Cigarette companies burn books that portray cigarette smoking as dangerous. There’s bound to be… show more.

The firemen are coming. As the inspiration behind everything from Rush’s Grace Under Pressure to the gunkata-toting Equilibrium, Fahrenheit 451 presents us with a hellish vision of 2049, where outlawed books are burned without remorse, suicide is a job hazard, and television is God. Bradbury himself was careful to state that he saw himself as “a preventor of futures, not a predictor of them,” which is nice and all, but the guy did happen to predict earbuds, 24-hour ATMs, flatscreen TVs, cancel culture, and the depersonalization of war, so at this stage he has a better batting average than… show more.

I read Fahrenheit 451 in my first year of high school and it left the biggest impression on me. It was such a meta theme: a tale of what might happen if the world decided to burn books. I couldn't fathom such an apocalypse initially, but as I paged through it and grew to see abuses of technology I became quite alarmed at the book’s prophetic message. It’s certainly a cautionary tale of censorship, but beyond that, it rekindled my love for reading and my curiosity for tradition. As a writer, this book reminded me that literature is not meant… show more.

Most people think about Fahrenheit 451 as being a book that is almost exclusively about the struggle of one man against an oppressive, overreaching government. I disagree. 

At its heart, it's about the weaknesses in our education systems that make Bradbury’s dystopian vision a sadly plausible future reality. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn, and Bradbury has noted how uncomfortable power has historically been with the books that educate the people—the books that don’t just explain “how” something should be done like an instruction manual, but dare to pose the question: “why?” Books that don’t simply ask… show more.