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    Fahrenheit 451
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    Fahrenheit 451
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    Fahrenheit 451
    Ebook214 pages3 hours

    Fahrenheit 451

    By Ray Bradbury

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    About this ebook

    The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.

    Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

    The Classic novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 is part of the Voyager Classic series. It stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

    Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, forty years on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

    Editor's Note

    Starting fires…

    Guy Montag is a fireman. But he doesn’t put fires out — he starts them. In Ray Bradbury’s imagined future, books are anathema, and any citizen found in possession of such contraband has their homes and possessions consumed by flames. (A future where books are banned is our worst nightmare.)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateFeb 14, 2013
    ISBN9780007496969
    Unavailable
    Fahrenheit 451
    Author

    Ray Bradbury

    Ray Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) published some 500 short stories, novels, plays and poems since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was twenty years old. Among his many famous works are 'Fahrenheit 451,' 'The Illustrated Man,' and 'The Martian Chronicles.'

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    Reviews for Fahrenheit 451

    4/5

    613 ratings466 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent story and easy to follow. Much much better than the movie. Thought provoking.
    • 5/5
      Sci-fi Classic novel of censorship and defiance in an insane world. Books were for burning along with the houses that hid them. Guy Montag was a fireman and his job was to start the fires. The book was frightening to me as my house is full of books and would definitely be burned if that were the law today! Scary thing is that offensive ideas are still being protested today instead of allowing others to have their own beliefs. Recommended!
    • 5/5
      Scary vision of the future
    • 5/5
      Outstanding dystopian novel, master work of SF and should be required reading in all schools.
    • 5/5
      waukegan representing!! love this book. the idea of people being walking books is magical to me.
    • 4/5
      Good, but not amazingly so.
    • 3/5
      Although I'm not usually a fan of Sci-fi, I quite liked this one.
    • 4/5
      I loved the prose more than I enjoyed the story, as powerful as it is.
    • 5/5
      A truly chilling dystopia that will leave any writer/literati going for the locks on her front door.A must read. Period.
    • 4/5
      Anyone who likes to read should read this one. About book burning, and books, and fire. Ha Ha. Its also about the importance of knowledge.
    • 4/5
      A picture of a horrifying future where books are abolished. A disturbing book, but a ray of hope shines through. Very thought-provoking.
    • 3/5
      Unlike the fireman of today who put out fires for a living, the firemen of Ray Bradbury’s world in Fahrenheit 451 start them. More specifically, when their alarms go off in the middle of the night, they rush to the home of individuals who are harboring and reading books. As the books burn (at 451 degrees Fahrenheit), the owners are arrested. The reading of books is considered a threat to the greater good and is a subversion against society.Although on the surface books are targeted as the source of evil, it is not the books themselves that the government fears, but the knowledge that people can acquire from reading those books. In fact, all forms of media have been watered down and controlled in an effort to keep the people at peace and without worry or fear. All to the extreme. The society in Bradbury’s world values conformity and to be different, an individual, is considered dangerous.Guy Montag is a fireman, one who has enjoyed his job for many years, but suddenly he finds himself in doubt. It begins with a girl, “I’m seventeen and I’m crazy” Clarisse McClellan, who he meets one night on his walk home. Clarisse is a curious girl whose questions make Montag question his own life, his own happiness. What Montag finds disturbs him. And from there, his life as he knows it begins to unravel and change. He doubts everything he once valued and held dear; and with these thoughts, he knows that nothing can ever be the same.It is Clarisse, a horrific tragedy at the house of an older woman whose books must be burnt, and the memories of an elderly professor in a park, that spur Guy Montag into action. He seeks out the old professor, hoping to find answers to his questions. In a world where asking questions and seeking the answers can be fatal, Montag places himself in a very dangerous position.Fahrenheit 451 is a powerful novel that forces readers to face the extreme of where censorship of not only books, but especially of thought and knowledge, can lead if unchecked. And yet it is also a novel of hope, of the possibility for change, if only a person is willing to remember and learn.I came away from this novel feeling a little ashamed at my recent thoughts of wanting to keep the world out and only focus on my own life. The stressors of watching and reading the news and keeping those events at arms length, seemed less stressful, less worrisome. It’s easier not to think of that which we can’t control—a way to avoid the fear and worry that can creep in. While these thoughts of mine come and go and are not to the extreme preached about in the novel, it’s a thought worth pondering all the same.Favorite Parts: I really enjoyed the moments with Clarisse McClellan. Her curiosity and openness, however simple it may have seemed at the time, helped spark Guy Montag into taking a closer look at his life and society around him.Beatty was an interesting character who made me grateful my copy of the novel included an afterward by the author which explained some of the character’s past. Beatty, although spouting the company line all the while, intrigued me. His knowledge of history and literature seemed counter to the denial and ignorance that society was encouraged to live in.Note about the Author: Ray Bradbury spent most of his time writing the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of the UCLA library, typing away on a typewriter that cost him a dime every half hour. He said that in all, it cost him nine dollars and eighty cents in dimes to complete that first draft.
    • 4/5
      a favorite.
    • 3/5
      The idea is wonderful. The characters are interesting. The ending is dissatisfying.
    • 4/5
      After a slow beginning, a very nice read.
    • 4/5
      As Karen noted, the contemporary reader knows the narrative. There are no surprises, yet I found it sublime.
    • 5/5
      Hard to believe I’ve never read this classic before. The book opens to make the reader question what he or she is reading. It has a crazed, abstract poetry to it. Gradually, it dawns the story is about much more than is seemingly on the page, questioning the meaning of books, the attention span of society, of works  shortened, condensed into snippets, even of politics, censorship and, ultimately, war. The book feels timeless yet never more timely than now, speaking of people turning from books to technology. This story is visionary. Clarisse McClellan: ‘She didn’t want to know how a thing was done but why.’ Fantastic line. Even better ones: ‘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.’ This on a page well worth reading alone. A subliminal work perhaps, certainly supreme. Some say works of fiction aren’t real but no fictional work can get more real than this.
    • 3/5
      kinda confusing...very interesting and creative, though
    • 1/5
      What can I say?!I loathed it. I found Bradbury's characters unyieldingly flat, I found his narrative dull and tedious, and despite being often categorised alongside Brave New World and 1984, I feel it absolutely fails to live up to its thematic predecessors and apparent brethren.
    • 5/5
      Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag, a fireman who works to help destroy books and preserve the future society’s willful ignorance. His neighbor, Clarisse McClellan, encourages him to look beyond the surface of the world and, after witnessing a woman willingly burn herself with her books, Montag begins to rethink the world in which he lives. He discusses his ideas with Faber, a former English professor, and they hope for a world where willful ignorance no longer reigns. Captain Beatty, Montag’s boss, argues that destroying books is for the best because it helps level society by removing critical thinking that might make people feel bad through their realization of social inequities.Though the novel recalls the Cold War fears of nuclear war and the second Red Scare, coupled with the then-recent memory of Nazi book burnings and purges, much of the book remains prescient. For example, people’s shortened attention spans resulting from the constant media bombardment feels all-too-relatable in light of modern social media and the glut of new media. Ironically, the novel’s frank discussion of subjects from religion to drug use and abortion has resulted in both Ballantine Books, through the “Bal-Hi” editions, and local authorities attempting to censor or limit access to this anti-censorship text. In light of “fake news” and media meddling from foreign powers, Fahrenheit 451 remains an important text to encourage critical thinking.
    • 5/5
      In the year 2016, Stephen Johnson, a 23 year old fireman in Perth, Western Australia, was charged with starting three separate fires deliberately. There was another case in 2009. Firemen are supposed to put fires out, not start them, aren’t they? Imagine an alternative world where that isn’t true, where the fireman’s mission is to wield the flame-thrower of state oppression. What then is the state most scared of?The success of Fahrenheit 451 is, I think, down to a very simple connection the author makes with the audience: Knowledge is better than ignorance, so we don’t burn books, do we? Imagine a society where they did and how shallow would that be. ‘We don’t burn books’ means any books, even gormless examples. I think the story has more gravity because it is set in the USA, a country which protects free speech to the extent that its citizens are allowed to say anything they like, no matter how abusive or unreliable. The principle’s the important thing, that it should protect everything we hand across generations, so what is known can never become smaller and what has enriched the heart can uplift and inspire new hearts. We instinctively feel that protecting the side of reason and higher emotion (thought, learning, art) is the right movement to be in, the side with real worth. Let’s feel warmth from that glow and keep it coming please. Championing this helps us to believe humans are noble creatures, can rise from the floor and create a fertility of value around them. If an alien ship landed, we’d expect them to be impressed by something as simple and yet as complex as one of our libraries. Culture is magnificence. Intelligence is cool. Burning books is regressing to ditch-shit. We feel it.What about people who don’t feel it? We feel sorry for them and realise it’s probably a cry for help, that we should address their resentment, jealously, illiteracy and the social reasons why they have become the ‘have nots’. Turning away from books is a failure of society. If educational dysfunction ever produced the majority of a population, that would go very badly for the ‘haves’, so there is a threat implied. What would happen then if a society became so daytime-television pathetic that the brainwashed public stopped learning? Not replacing their thinking with different thinking but instead turning down the dial on thinking altogether and blocking the sources that intellect reaches to? This could happen, incidentally, if AI did all the work and the main incentive for learning ended. Would the population then begin to resent self-improvers? Probably not, but it is not impossible.The author then adds the vibe that (like Orwell’s 1984, V for Vendetta and Reading Lolita in Tehran) an authoritarian state has institutionalised ignorance because knowledgeable and informed citizens who reach conclusions alone are potentially very dangerous to one’s mighty aegis. Therefore, ban the books. Also echoing Orwell, the state in this story keeps its subjects occupied by continually being at war with someone, anyone, every year. If you think of the first country that springs to mind, that has been fighting someone almost every year since it was founded, does that sound familiar?Closing schools, turning academics out into the fields, confiscating property and propagating conflict as an excuse to arm your enforcers, using martial law and to conflate non-conformism with helping the adversary – burning books – has happened for at least a few years in all of these places: Cambodia, Vietnam, Germany, Myanmar and Russia. Some of them have retained aspects of fine culture (approved composers, the national ballet) but only did this to demonstrate to the world a lingering sense of superiority, ignoring the twist that everything elevated they celebrated had been created under a quite different system.This is also the journey of a man from ignorance. He starts metaphorically huddled around a fire in the darkness and, through self-realisation, takes fumbling steps toward the light, comprehending its value and rejecting his indoctrinated past, seeing what the worthless ideology has done to him and seeking salvation in a higher cause. The redemption angle has been done many times before but this is strong stuff, so rewarding and ultimately an elemental force of pro-literacy. At the end, he doesn’t need to be a professor to be valued by itinerant professors as being the right-thinking sort makes us equals in our struggle against density. The fireman just needs to be on the right side; and so do we. Giving this book a high star rating in a review is like voting, publically announcing that you cherish reason. Anyone who gives it a one star rating should probably be checked on occasionally as it’s only a matter of time before the TV breaks, monotony wins, their eyes cross and they fuck the cat.
    • 5/5
      Goodreads Synopsis: The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.My Review: I read this book for my English class, I'd heard good things, but I wasn't expecting to fall in love with it like I did. I read this book in almost one sitting. I didn't realize how much I really loved Ray Bradbury's work until I started reading it for school, and I'm definitely going to have to read more. I definitely recommend reading it for anyone who hasn't yet, and that's surprising if you haven't, it's over 60 years old! Which is crazy! His work in this book predicted the future, quite literally, even if he didn't mean to do that. TV's that take up whole walls? Bluetooth's? Everyone's addicted to Prozac? It's like he knew what was going to happen. The characters in this book are amazing, definitely seem like real people, and they're not forced to act, it's like they told him the story and he wrote it down. It flows together amazingly. I could totally imagine this book being real, only black and white and with people from the fifties, or at least that's how I imagine it to be. It seems amazingly futuristic, but not so much, if that makes sense. There's no flying cars, there's no robots taking over, there's no alien invasions. The world is the same world as it is now, only technology has advanced. I don't know what else to say. This book is amazing and I couldn't put it down for a second while I was reading it. I loved it. It's actually one of the few books that I would read again and again, which doesn't happen very often. Thanks for reading. (Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)
    • 5/5
      Dated, but a great story still. Beware censorship and the mindset it brings! Beware group thinking and allowing the masses to dictate what you think and do! Don't let the government or popular media tell you what to read, what to like or what to do, is the lesson of this book. Bradbury was anti-censorship and anti government control, within reason, of course. Still a great book and a great lesson. The technology is dated, the lesson is not.
    • 3/5
      pg.60-61 ...She didn't want to know "how" a thing was done, but "why"....the poor girl is better off dead. 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.
      pg.82 Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at "me". I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the "walls". I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.'
      pg 89 Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.
      pg.106 The Devil can cit scriptures for his purpose.
      pg.156 Everyone must leave something behind when he dies...A child or a book or a painting o r a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Ora garden planted. Something your hand touched....and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

      I didn't think I had read this book, but as I was reading it, I realized I had been assigned this book in school. I feel the same about the characters as I did then; Faber and Clarisse are my favorite. Mildred and her "friends" I didn't like at all, but of course they lend to the death of the city. I didn't like Montag until he wakes up from his fog of a life.

      The ending in high school fell on deaf ears. I didn't know anything about Ecclesiastes. Now, with a little more wisdom, it's more meaningful.

      The thing I didn't like about the book is the cursing of swear words and of God's name.
    • 3/5
      In a dystopian future, firemen don't fight fires, they start them. And the best kindling of all is books...This book is one of those classics that just didn't live up to the hype for me. I didn't feel like the world building was there, and honestly it felt like a weak attempt at dystopian fiction. I know I should give it credit for the time it was written, but there are so many better dystopias out there now that I can't hardily recommend this one.
    • 4/5
      “‘Cram them full of noncombustible 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.'”In “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray BradburyTeenagers don't need any special kind of reading program, since they are hugely curious about everything, at least i was interested in the extra-curricular forbidden literature (there was plenty at that time) and the hidden subjects, not out of a morbid fantasy -- but perhaps too, a literary imagination.Bradbury was such a surprise. Some stories seemed full of compassion and solidarity --you'd call it now. We tend to look back on our teenage selves, and our teenage tastes in literature, with a certain amount of embarrassment. As though we should have been reading, then, the stuff we read now. But I think we're looking at it the wrong way. For the middle-aged to dismiss a book that has an enlightening effect on a teenage mind is as foolish as for a teenager to dismiss a book that has an enlightening effect on a middle-aged mind. We are not the same person all our lives. My brain is a different shape when you're a teenager. It needs a book that's that shape. Bradbury wrote that kind of book. A lot of science fiction writers do. Most adult literary novelists are incapable of writing that kind of book. That does not make either groups' books superior, just different, and hard to compare...Isn't the judging of other forms of media as offensive exactly what Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" was about? These days, of course, we can laugh at such monstrosities. Books can be seen to burn at 232 degrees centigrade. What imperialistic barbarians we used to be! The one thing I took from “Fahrenheit 451” was not so much that they were burning books, but that the society dismissed anything that didn't provide instant gratification or required thought. Burning books was the symptom of a sick society, arguably more prevalent now then when Ray wrote it. Given the trend for lithium ion batteries to spontaneously combust one wonders if an eBook version of Fahrenheit 451 will disappear in some Tinguely-esque self-parody?
    • 3/5
      I know it's a classic; a must-read. However, I thought it was just an "ok" story. It was thought provoking, but honestly, I found it a bit boring
    • 4/5
      Fahrenheit 451 is a great book that I didn't appreciate when I had to read it for school when I was younger. I am so glad I decided to read it again and actually finish it this time. A society that only wants the good and action pack, no time for thoughts or things that don't affect them right this second. It's an extreme version of where we are at today. I don't think we'll ever have a group of people to burn books, but a lot about the masses in Fahrenheit 451 mirror what people are like today. Kind of scary. Some parts were confusing and jumpy, like there were hints of war coming up but at the end it just seemed so sudden and the "outlaws" already had a plan in tact and Guy got there in the nick of time after realizing he needs things to change.
    • 5/5
      I’m not sure how I hadn’t read this one before but so glad I have now. It’s amazing how I can see tidbits of our world today and our overwhelming need to be on our phones and TVs in this novel. Books will always be our saviors. It did break my heart a little each time they burned a book. I can not wait for the HBO adaption coming out in the spring! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 5 fires instead of stars for this one.
    • 4/5
      There’s no question that Bradbury is a literary treasure, but Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t strike me as the powerhouse novel English teachers laud it to be. It’s well-written, intriguing, and Bradbury has a wonderful voice, filled with beautiful and insightful descriptive prose. But the book itself just seems heavy-handed. It’s a mainstay of dystopian fiction, of warning against our loss of identity, of the ability to read and think for ourselves, but the message is forced down your throat. Oh, it’s a terrible world to live in where all the books are forbidden, but that hardly seems the only pitfall of this setting. People are told to “be happy” all the time, they watch TV all day, do as they’re asked by the government, but it just seems a bit of a disbelieving leap that books alone would change the attitude ingrained in this citizenry. I understand it’s allegory, but I would have preferred a bit more subtlety and/ or expansion of other ideas to topple the government/ reshape the nation. Also, besides Montag and Captain Beattie, the characters are perfectly flat. Even the teenage girl Montag meets is flat, an archetypical free soul who sees beauty in every tree and idea. The dialogue is long-winded at times and somewhat repetitive. It’s a powerful story, to be sure, but seems to have been stretched a bit too far into novel-length.