In the
world of Fahrenheit 451, possessing a
book is illegal, and will result in the books, and your house, being burned.
Guy Montag is a fireman, and it is his job to start the fires. On his way home
from work, Montag meets a girl named Clarisse. She seems to be much more
observant and interested in the world than anyone else he has met. When he arrives back home, he finds that his wife had swallowed a large amount of pills in an attempt at suicide. This upsets Montag greatly, and he begins to doubt
the reasons given to him to burn the books. His feelings shift and sway until
he eventually decides to read a book taken from one of the houses he burned, just to
see what is actually inside. The next day he wakes up sick, and decides that he
will stay home that day and try to read the his ill gotten book. When he calls
in to report his "illness," the fire chief, who had been noticing how
strangely he was acting, comes by the house. While there, he explains to Montag
how books are dangerous, that the only media that can exist has to be inoffensive, and how media needs to have
"mass" to be consumed. Captain Beatty, the fire chief, discovers the
book in Montag's pillow and he tells him how it is the firemen's job to keep
people feeling happy. Montag decides that he needs another person who shares the
same feelings about books that he does and so he decides to visit a retired
English professor he once knew. The English professor, Faber, gives Montag a
radio that he can talk to him with, and then sends Montag on his way. Later,
when his wife, Mildred, has some of her friends over to watch television, he
takes out a poetry book and reads it to them. One of her friends is aghast, and
rushes over to her house and reports Montag for the possession of books. When
Montag eventually goes back to his firehouse, Captain Beatty tells him of their next assignment, a "special case." They are being sent to burn down Montag's own house. He is told to destroy it piecemeal, with a flamethrower. Once he begins
to be berated by Captain Beatty, he decides that he can't take it anymore, and he burns
Captain Beatty to death. A mechanical hound is sent in pursuit of him, and he
burns that as well. Another hound is brought in, and Montag takes off running
until he loses the second hound by jumping in a river. As he walks through the woods and away from the river he finds a group of like minded individuals who are hoarding books in
their memories and waiting for the day when they are legal again. They do not
have to wait long though, because the next day the cities where most of the
people live are bombed and destroyed.
Fahrenheit 451 is the story of Montag's
intellectual awakening. In the beginning, he does not think much and has a
passion for burning: "He walked toward the corner thinking
little at all about nothing in particular." He really begins to see how
wrong his actions are when he burns a woman alive when she refuses to leave her
house and her books. He begins to wonder what sort of object can have such a
hold over someone, to the point that they will die for it. This is kind of the
first crack in his dam, and when he meets Clarisse, she widens it. He
begins to question why he is burning the books, why there is always a war going
on, and why no one cares about anything that is real anymore. The more Montag
learns about the world around him, the more he feels he has to overcome the
vapid and self centered society that he lives in, "I'm so damned unhappy,
I'm so mad, and I don’t even know why." He is described in the book as a
man in his thirties. Other people's opinions of him differ widely, with
Clarisse thinking that he is "interesting" and Faber thinking that he
is a fellow book lover. They both think of him in a positive light, and that he has
more potential than he realizes. Captain Beatty, on the other hand, thinks that
Montag is dangerous, like an insect that must be stamped out.
The
theme of Fahrenheit 451 is that it is
society's duty to continue to care about the world around it, to not exist in
a self contained bubble. In the book, people have lost the time to think: "The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to
think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy
hour." The government has taken the saying panem et circenses (bread and
circuses) to the extreme by making sure that its citizens are content in
watching and hearing government controlled media that exists to make the citizens
think less, and watch more, and since no one wants to invest time in a story, the
shows have no story, as they exist simply to be seen and to entertain. Montag's wife, Mildred, is
enthralled by their television parlor, with a "parlor family" that
pretends to know and care about her. She doesn't understand why anyone on earth
would want the world different because she feels she is happy with
her lot. She is not really happy with it though, because she attempts to commit
suicide earlier in the book. Mildred serves as an example of the wider society
around her. She acts happy, but her true feelings are extremely different from her actions.
The
citizens in the book have become only interested in themselves. What really
shows this is how most of the cars go about one hundred miles per
hour, and when they hit someone, it is regarded as the pedestrian's fault. By the
year in which it is set, people see nothing wrong with casually mowing down
pedestrians while on a leisurely drive. When Montag is attempting to cross the
street he narrowly avoids a car that was attempting to run him over. In his
world the only thing the people care about is themselves, and the absence of
literature sadly helps to promote that. Books and stories make people see
the world from other's eyes, and when the opportunity to do that disappears, the
attempts to do so vanish as well. Empathy is a core tenet of civilization, since without it, it would
be impossible to work together.
Farenheit 451 has made me realize that
what happened to society in the book could all too easily happen to our society
today. If one person stops caring for others, there is nothing stopping
everyone else from doing the same. I would recommend Farenheit 451 to people who enjoy science fiction, or a good
dystopian story. It is a book with a plot that grabs you, and a theme that keeps you
thinking.
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