Fahrenheit 451 Reading Log
Ray Bradbury was an American science-fiction writer and screenwriter who wrote Fahrenheit 451 and other books. He was born in Illinois on August 22, 1920, and died on June 5, 2012. Bradbury's family moved to California, where he became an author and wrote many books and even a self-published magazine. He got his love of books from studying in libraries, as his parents were too poor to send him to college.
Fahrenheit 451 was written in the 1950s, during the Cold War, when the age of television was just starting. Many families turned off their lights to be able to see the pictures on the tiny screen, and Bradbury became concerned that eventually, people would not care about books anymore, and just watch television. Another concern during this time in America was that of censorship, which is also reflected in the book, when the government is banning books and ordering them burned.
Fahrenheit 451 starts off about a 'fireman' named Guy Montag. In the setting, a dystopian future world, books are outlawed and firemen such as Guy are sent out to find and destroy these books. One day, as Guy returns from work, he meets a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, one of his new neighbors, and the rising action begins.
In contrast to his uninterested attitude, Clarisse is very curious about Guy and about the world she lives in. Guy returns home and meets his wife, Mildred, who is obsessed with the television and the portable radio she always wears and listens to. Their dark, lifeless home is in contrast with their neighbors', which is full of conversation with the lights on late into the night.
Guy finds out his wife is dying of unknowingly taking too many sleeping pills and, in a very confusing sequence, manages to call the hospital, who sends two workers to detox his wife.
Guy thinks a bit about the prospects of life in this world, how people just came in and took out his wife's blood and replaced it, and sneaks over to the neighbors' home, to find out that they are talking about how this new society in a way wipes its nose with people and then throws them away. It seems the dystopian society is as impassive about peoples' fates as Guy was about the world around him before he met Clarisse.
The next day, when returning to work, Guy meets Clarisse again, who tells him that she is surprised at his being a fireman, since most of the firemen she talked to thought she was crazy and didn't listen to her words or care about what she said, however, he is different.
Interestingly enough, a large part of the book until now is how people in this dystopian future have no original ideas, they're all just listening to the radio and the TV. And guess who controls the radio and TV? That's right, the government, which in this story is also outlawing books. I think the conflict is between being able to care about the real world around you and not caring about it. Moreover, there is conflict between what makes one care about the real world and what makes one not do so.
After meeting Clarisse again and talking about the rain with her, Guy goes to the fire station, where he sees a mechanical hound (continuing the theme of futuristic sci-fi), about which he makes some interesting remarks, like the one about the hound which is 'alive' in a sense that it can move around and attack a target, but it is not really alive. Maybe this is to point out the previous (and future) interactions he has with his wife, who is alive, as in she lives and breathes, but is not really alive, as she doesn't really do anything except listen to the radio and watch TV. Just like the mechanical hound is a product of some factory, Guy's wife, Mildred, is a product of the society. At the fire station, Guy also meets his boss, Beatty, who is also interesting, but we'll get to that later.
Over the next few days, Guy meets Clarisse every day. She tells him of what she does instead of school, and he really likes spending time with her and listening to her conversation. He even tells her that she makes him feel like a father. However, one day, he doesn't see her on the way to work. The next section contrasts the meaningful conversation Guy had with Clarisse with meaningless conversations Guy has with his coworkers in the following days.
Some interesting things happen in the next section. First, Guy is speaking with his coworkers while playing cards, and he asks them some questions, such as if firemen used to put out fires. Then, one of the firemen PULLS OUT THE FIREMAN RULEBOOK (a book!) and shows him a note in the book about how the Firemen were established in 1790 to burn British books and how Benjamin Franklin was the first fireman. This is very, very ironic. Firstly, the firemen, whose only job is to burn books, ACTUALLY HAVE AND NEED TO HAVE BOOKS (albeit ones with fake information). Secondly, the government changed the facts about Ben Franklin into propaganda, which is a funny choice, as Benjamin Franklin wrote many books and even printed his own newspaper.
Right after this scene, a fire alarm rings and the firemen go off to burn some books. This next sequence is also quite ironic. Guy and the rest of the firemen go into the building and meet an old lady who is still here. She quotes "Play the man, Master Ridley, for we shall this day, light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out" (trust me this is important). Guy goes upstairs, to the attic, opens a trapdoor, and is assaulted by an avalanche of books. For some reason, he saves one of the books (!!!) and then does his job and spreads kerosene on the rest. They leave the house and prepare to light it, but the old lady pulls out a match and does it herself before dying in the fire. On the way back, Guy asks Beatty (his boss) about what the old lady said, and he quotes her exactly, and tells him the historical context in which the quote was said; the quote was from Hugh Latimer, who burned at the stake with Nicholas Ridley at Oxford, on October 16, 1555, for the ‘heresy’ of being Protestants and speaking out about it (!!!).
I think it's obvious what's ironic here (I marked it down), but I'll point it out clearly: First, Guy, the fireman who was so ecstatic at burning books at the beginning of Fahrenheit 451 is now saving a book?! Second, the fire captain somehow knows the historical context and can accurately quote Hugh Latimer's final words. He appears extremely well-read for a man whose life is devoted to burning books! The third irony in this section is the context of the quote. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned alive (put to death by their government) for the truth, that people are justified by faith in Jesus instead of works, and their unwillingness to convert to Catholicism.
The next section solidifies the character of Guy's wife as a very uncaring person, just like the mechanical hound, as she calmly and emotionlessly states that she heard that Clarisse had been run over by a car and her family moved out, something that affects Guy very much.
The next morning, Guy wakes up sick. Mildred is surprised because he was never sick before, and she doesn't know (well, doesn't seem to care) that Guy is sad over Clarisse's death, and he feels guilty of helping burn the old lady alive and also for destroying the books whose authors spent a lot of time writing. He feels like every time he burned a book, he also killed its author. We can see a progression in Guy's character, from someone who enjoys his job and not really thinking about what he's doing, to realizing that he was in the wrong.
He asks her to call Beatty to tell him he won't be coming in to work that day. After much reluctance, she calls Beatty, and after some time, he arrives at Guy's home to have a little chat with him.
Beatty tells him the real reason why the Firemen's roles were changed from putting out fires to starting them. As time went on and technology became better and better, information became more and more condensed. People didn't want to read books anymore, and they were banned because they made people actually think instead of passively ingest everything the government told them on the TV or radio. Beatty tells Guy that he actually read a few books in his time, but he did not understand what they were about. He also mentions that every fireman eventually comes to a point in which he starts questioning what he's doing, but the idea that he's 'making everyone happier' helps most people continue their work. Beatty also says that if a fireman is caught with a book, he will be allowed 24 hours to read it and see that books are, truly, full of nonsense, and then afterward either burn the book himself or they will come and burn it.
This is an important section in the book because it finally tells us the truth about the Firemen and the reason for the destruction of the books. It's ironic that in the middle of this important conversation, Mildred is busy doing meaningless things such as moving random items around in Guy's room and watching TV. It further characterizes her as someone who doesn't really care about the truth. She even tries to get Guy caught with the book he saved from the fire the previous day (which was hidden under his pillow). Apparently, she doesn't even care about her husband! This is also a moment of dramatic irony, when we, the readers, have our suspicions confirmed while the characters in the book are extremely shocked by what Beatty says.
We can see that Beatty's words really affect Guy because right after he leaves, he shows Mildred his book collection, which he saved from different fires over the years he worked as a fireman. He says he was planning to look at them later, and find out for himself why the Firemen burned these books. He convinces Mildred not to burn the books, and they start reading.
This is interesting for Guy's character, as we find out that he actually has been saving books for quite a while, and it did not start after he met Clarisse. However, he only had the idea to read these books after Beatty told him of their danger.
One last ironic thing: Beatty mentioned that books made people quarrel and that removing them was helping to make everyone happy. At the same time, Mildred was watching a TV show where a bunch of people were just quarreling, and she said it was one of her favorite shows.
Guy and his wife continue reading the books he had saved. Guy doesn't really understand what many of the books he read were about, but he realizes that they are important. He finds a copy of the Bible, which he decides to take to a professor he once met to see if he could make a copy of it so that he would not have to burn the original book if he was found with it. He also finds out it's the only copy of the Bible left in the country.
After taking the tram to his house, he meets the old professor, named Faber, and they have a discussion about books and their importance. He finds out from the professor that books are important because they are highly detailed, unlike the high-speed, gibberish entertainment that most people were watching, and they are thought-provoking, which scared the government so much, they were outlawed, although few people read books by the time they were outlawed anyway. Faber gives him a device he invented that would enable them to communicate anywhere, and Guy gives the professor the Bible before leaving.
When he gets home, he meets his wife and her friends, who are talking about random, pointless things, just like the people on the TV shows they liked to watch. One of Mildred's 'friends' starts talking about how she hates her kids and how she is glad that her husband might die in the war, which makes Guy snap and take out a poetry book. He reads one of the poems, and it makes the lady start crying (probably out of guilt), and then he incinerates the book so he wouldn't be suspected. Mildred's friends leave.
These two sections compare Guy and Mildred's friends and the conversations they have. While Guy befriends a brilliant professor (he invented his own communications network, after all), his wife is friends with a bunch of foolish chatterboxes, just like her (yes, I like picking on Mildred, now leave me alone). Guy and Faber formulate a plan to help society by reprinting important books, and Mildred and her friends discuss the latest TV shows and how many husbands her friend had.
Later, Guy goes to the fire station and meets Beatty there. He brings a random book from his collection to replace the Bible he had saved. Beatty then rants to him about a dream he had in which he and Guy spit out quotes from books at each other. A report comes in and they all pile in the fire engine, only to arrive at Guy's house.
In this section, we can see Guy progress from just being confused about books to finding out why they are important and were outlawed, to him and Faber formulating a plan to save the books and then putting that plan into action.
It's ironic that part of their plan was to shut down fire stations by planting books in firemen's homes, thus necessitating that the homes be burnt. This, in turn, would lead to many firemen quitting, and maybe others would read the books and turn traitor. It's ironic that the first fireman's house to burn is Guy's, the fireman who helped come up with the plan.
After the firemen arrive at Guy's house, he sees Mildred leaving in a taxicab. He finds out from Beatty that Mildred was the one who had sent the report to the fire station and is ordered to burn his home down. Beatty mocks Guy after telling him that he'll be imprisoned for owning the books. Guy uses his flamethrower on Beatty and kills him, then knocks out the other two firemen and destroys the Mechanical Hound that attacked him.
I think that Beatty's death was a symbol that the fireman in Guy had finally died. Before, Guy thought about abandoning the books and going back to being a fireman. However, Guy now cannot go back to being a fireman, as he had murdered his boss and was now a wanted criminal. In other words, this is the point of climax in the story. It's also ironic that the fire captain was killed by the fire he forced Guy to burn his house down with.
After killing Beatty, Guy runs away from the scene of the crime. He eventually gets to a gas station, where he manages to clean himself up from the fight. He decides to go to Faber's house and then run off into the countryside to escape the law. On the way to Faber's house, Guy almost gets run over by a car and manages to plant a book in a fireman's home and call the fire department on him. This is the beginning of the falling action in the book.
Upon arriving at Faber's home, Guy is told to follow the railroad tracks out of the city, where he might be able to find some gypsy camps to live. He asked the former fireman to meet him in St. Louis in two weeks. They watch as a new Mechanical Hound is released to track him down, and Guy tells Faber how to get rid of his smell in the house before leaving so that the Mechanical Hound would not be able to track him.
After leaving Faber's home, Guy runs down to the river and manages to get in before the Hound arrives, thus escaping detection. After he floats downstream for a few hours, he gets out of the river and eventually meets some men around a campfire. They welcome him and give him a coffee and a serum that will make him smell different, so the Hound wouldn't be able to track him. Then, they tell him that they each memorized books so that, when society came to accept them once more, they would be able to write them down and thus preserve the information in them. The men welcome him into their society, as Guy had managed to memorize part of Ecclesiastes.
The next day, they set off away from the city. On their way into the countryside, they hear enemy jet bombers and see the city exploding in the distance. The group decides to head back and see if anyone needs their help. The conclusion is that the dystopian society has been destroyed, and the books will once more be necessary to guide mankind.
This section wraps up the story. After leaving the Firefighters, Guy wandered around without any purpose until he met the secret society of book preservers. He also decides he will never burn anything again. In a way, the destruction of the dystopian society at the end of the book is both the end it had set up for itself and a symbol that Guy wasn't a product of that society anymore, unlike Mildred, who dies in the city. The society had, in a way, destroyed itself with the people who came out of it. After all, a society which doesn't care about its people, which takes pleasure in destroying things, and which thinks it knows how to make its people happy without them having to think, is likely to start wars and produce people who think the same way as it does. In the book, we find out that the dystopian government started and won all the wars it fought, and now that was coming back upon itself.
One of the major themes in Fahrenheit 451 is that of the dystopian society. This society is described as having an oppressive government that is censoring people by burning their books. The people in this society are obsessed with media (the TV and radio, in this book), are anti-social, disconnected from nature (my grandpa would shudder), uncaring, and destructive. However, there is also a less obvious theme of the ideal society, a society which is social, connected to nature, and caring about its people.
This is also shown in Guy's overall character arc. He changes from a model citizen of the dystopian society: a fireman, who assists the government in oppressing and censoring its people to a model citizen of the ideal society, spending time with other people and in nature and caring about them.
Another theme in this book is that of the teacher and why a teacher is needed. Before Guy met Faber, who taught him about books and what they meant, he didn't understand why they were important or what they meant. This is further shown when Guy reads to Mildred's friends, who don't understand anything he read to them and are confused and offended. Beatty also says he read books and didn't understand them, which is why he hates them and wants to burn them. The reason why all these people didn't understand was because they didn't have a teacher, like Guy did.
The main motif in Fahrenheit 451 is that of fire. Fire symbolizes many things in this story. It's a symbol for destruction and censorship when used by the firemen. However, there are other ways fire is used. It's also a symbol for kindness and caring, when Guy mentions that Clarisse reminded him of candlelight that didn't burn but illuminated the room. The motif of fire is also used as a symbol of rebirth, when the group Guy ends up in the end mention how the phoenix is like humanity, which, even though it makes the same mistakes over and over again, manages to come back and in a way, get 'reborn' every time.
