Reading:
Started February 21, 2005. Ended February 24, 2005.
I have read this before many (more than thirty) years ago.
Specs:
Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451,
published by Simon and Schuster, New York, in 1951. From the Central
Resource Library.
Overview:
This book is about Montag, who is a fireman tasked with burning
books. If you read carefully, you will see it is not all books, just
most books, (a list of several million banned books) so there is some
excuse for teaching people to read, unlike the movie.
Often the author digresses into poetic prose. That is, the
meanings of the words are less important than the emotions the words
convey. I will scan in a sample at the end of this review.
In the story, Guy Montag, the fireman, meets Clarissa, who is a 17
year old high school student. Except she doesn't attend often, since
what they teach is really stupid. Montag (Guy is constantly referred
to as Montag) makes friends with her, and they meet every day. One
day she just doesn't appear any more, and eventually Montag learns
she was killed in an automobile accident. This is said in such a way
as to indicate that no one really cares that people are killed this
way.
In the book, Montag is already collecting some of the banned books
before the first page, which is different than the movie. He has a
non-relationship with is wife, Mildred. That is, she just listens to
her "cousins," as the TV personalities are called, but she is his
wife, and he misses her when she's gone.
He meets Faber, who is a recluse, and encourages people to disobey
the book burning rules. Montag suggests that they plant a book in
all the fireman's houses, and then report them. At one point Montag
does this with one fireman. But Faber gives only passive support for
this.
In the background, there are always bombers flying, and at the end
of the book war is declared, and an atomic bomb levels the city. I
notice a remake of this as a movie is planned for 2006, and reading
this, I wonder how much the current war atmosphere makes this book
very appropriate even though the last movie exorcised the war
subplot.
Eventually, Montag is found out when he reads some passages to
some of his house guests, and his wife leaves him, his house is
burned, and he is a wanted criminal. Of course, he is not caught,
but an innocent person is called "Montag" and is killed for the
crime. The crime, of course, is murder, since he killed one his boss
when he was going to use Montag to trace Faber.
Of course, everything becomes irrelevant because of the stupid
war. (This is the attitude toward the war, if not the words used to
describe it.) This book was written in 1951, and published in 1953,
so the "war" being referred to is the second world war mostly, a
fact that indicates the authors attitude toward that war. (Similar
to my fathers, I might add.)
In the end, Montag meets up with other like minded people where he
is accepted, the city is destroyed ("And across the World, thought
Montag, how many other cities died? And here in our country, how
many? A hundred, a thousand?")
The final quote (from Ecclesiastes, it is implied, but not said,
and I have not looked it up), (Nope, Revelations 22:2)
"And on either side of the river was
there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded
her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the
healing of the nations."
A powerful quote, and an important one to remember, and a good one
to end the book on.
Quotes:
As promised, a sample of the poetic prose:
How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who
takes it out of you? And that awful flower the other day, the
dandelion! It had summed up everything, hadn't it? "What a
shame! You're not in love with anyone!" And why not?
Well, wasn't there a wall between him and
Mildred, when you came down to it? Literally not just one wall but,
so far, three! And expensive, too! And the uncles, the aunts, the
cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the
gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and
said it loud, loud, loud. He had taken to calling them relatives from
the very first. "How's Uncle Louis today?" "Who?"
"And Aunt Maude?" The most significant memory he had of
Mildred, really, was of a little girl in a forest without trees (how
odd!) or rather a little girl lost on a plateau where there used to
be trees (you could feel the memory of their shapes all about)
sitting in the center of the "living room." The living
room; what a good job of labeling that was now. No matter when he
came in, the walls were always talking to Mildred.
Montag is lamenting the lack of communication with his wife, and
how the TV has come between them, three walls worth.
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