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Discussion:Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

May 2004 book of the month

Fahrenheit 451 by RAY BRADBURY


All discussions related to this book should be in this thread. To keep readability of posts, there is no need to use spoilers in your posts unless you feel it is absolutely necessary. Anyone reading the posts in this particular thread must be aware that they may contain spoilers about the plot and characters of the book.

But Angels and Demons was winning!! Blast it....~drives to library~

Ah, yes. Fahrenheit 451. This is the first piece by Ray Bradbury I had ever read, and it resulted in Ray Bradbury attaining the honourable title of Aetheria's Favourite Author (well, one of my numerous favourite authors anyway).

I haven't read it in a rather long time, though. -_-

I empathise with Clarisse McClellan. If I were stranded in this kind of society, with its superficial happiness, I know I definitely would be like Clarisse. Not like Guy Montag though, I'd probably be too cowardly. xD I don't have the courage to go against society like that.

...I'm hoping that this post is appropriately vague and spoiler-free. ^^

I liked the irony that tyhe best scholars were hobo's. That was real funny. The idea of burning books is just awful. Books are a way to express ideas and w/o them, all of our basic freedoms are gone.

Interestingly enough, 451 fahrenheit is not the flashpoint of paper... Bradbury admitted he used the number because it "sounded good..."

or maybe not interestingly....

What's it about anyways? (if anybody answers this, use spoiler tags.. please)

the first time i read this book i was 14 and quite idealistic, but in a naive way. and thought clarisse was a realistic character. time went by, and i still think she is an ideal character, but the world is more often than not shaped by people by montag. clarisse was perhaps the trigerring event for him to have a change of heart.
this is such a great book. the hopeful tone at the end is quite nicely done.

Clarisse struck me as a strange person. But as I continue to read more into the book, I realize she is pretty much the same way you describe her. I'm reading the book again there were somethings that just left me confused.

I read this about a year ago for english.

It's a story that takes place in an alternate present--the government is corrupt and finds solutions to problems in evading manners--somewhat like Rome's old Bread and Circus program. Guy Montag is a fireman, but in this world, fires don't occur naturally. Instead, the firemen and women burn books to prevent, for reasons the fire captain later tells Montag in the story. "Fahrenheit 451" refers to the temperature that books burn at. The story focuses on Montag's "quest", I suppose it could be called, for the truth. He ends up defying the government by siezing books himself and reading them, which is illegal.

I know there's more, but like I said, it was a while ago. If you read 1984, it follows a similar premise.

Ray Brad's the king of sci-fi hallucinogenic fantasies. He easily sucks you into his world and the trips are awesome and mind blowing. he inspired me to take this kinda delineating path in some of my writings. I've read four of his books namely Silver Locusts, Dandelion Wine and the Painted Man and the Sound of Thunder which are mostly a collection of short thought provoking short stories. I haven't come across this book though i heard Mel Gibson wanted to direct it starring Brad Pitt a few years back(guess it was just a chip of the ole rumor mill). When i saw this i wanted to find out more maybe i'll seriously check out.

Pretty much the story behind it is the censorship invoked by government. Well that's what I think.

Ah, nothing like reverting back to an era where knowledge was feared. No one was to think. All orders were to be obeyed w/o question, and countless years of knowledge never to be read by future generations was burned for fear of revolutionary ideas. This book was fascinating to read. The movie was also interesting. But there was an element while reading Fahrenheit 451 that didn't carry over to the movie. So much more is said in words than pictures. It lies contradiction to the axoim "a picture is worth a thousand words". Sometimes an idea can say volumes.

I just started reading this book, I'm on page 24, due to other books I needed to get done for school... Anyways... It's almost a little frightening how many parallels I can already draw between the book and our modern lifestyle. The guy's wife constantly listening to the radio (and IMO not so much because she wants to listen to it, more because she doesn't want to listen to anything else), the way he never noticed all these little things about the world around him, how selfish his wife was with the TV and all, how everybody drives fast (well obviously we don't drive THAT fast, but you get the point), etc, etc... And the most interesting thing to me is that it was written in 1950, when such a world was probably considered a fantasy. It shows just how much foresight Bradbury must've had to see what was happening in society...

I really think it wasn't so much government causing things to be censored, but society itself did it. Today, people are too sensitive to what is published. Minorities of this that and the other feel offended at the slightest. This is what led to the burnings. This could happen today, still.

very good point you bring up. Though the old kind of white supremacist racism still exists in the south and a few other places, in a lot of other places, the main problem is just general racial tension. Whites are afraid to say anything bad about minorities, because they are afraid it will sound racist.

Yes, I meant that and the other minority groups, not only ethnic, but idealogical and otherwise. People don't want to have arguments, so they take away the ability to, intellegently, have true discussions. No one can argue about beliefs if everything is turned to hollowness. I didn't really mean ethnic minorities, and the south really doesn't have much of a white supremist problem, at least not here. I'm a minority, non mexican, person in Texas. The minorities in this book I believe are the special interest groups.

I know the white supremecist thing isn't a big problem, but it still does exist. Anyways... Yeah, I agree with you about the minorities in the book being the special interest groups.

This is nice, though, people not completely affected by the stupidity of the collective stupid, known as society, that can sit around and discuss a book about when society turns particularly stupid.

indeed

I finished the book a few days ago, had a nice ending. I was half expecting for him to save all of humanity with his book powers... But it was nice that he didn't, made it seem more realistic.

The function of good sci-fi is not to predict the future, but instead to prevent it. He wanted to only open eyes to what could be, not what would be. That's my take on the books function at least. I am interested what other people say.

I read this book,and i liked it,it wasn't the best,but i liked it. It had lots of good parts to it,but i didn't like the "hound" and all that crap....but over all it's an alright book

I had to do some project on Fahrenheit for my German lessons some weeks ago, now it's really one of my favourite books.
I loved Bradbury's way of describing situations and people, his whole style is unique and the language simply wonderful - balanced sentences, well-chosen words and careful, yet mighty expressions.
Unfortunately, I only read the German translation which is kinda bad, but the little bits I found in English - online or elsewhere - were close to perfection in the choice of words and amazingly flowing to read.


Somehow reality is already worse than his dystopia. It's alarming how close we already are to the negative image of our society Bradbury created...

i wouldn't call it foresight...but rather insight to the way society was heading to...

This is defaintly a great peice of literature. The characters are near perfect metaphors for society. the book even holds an eerie kind underlying message in his writing that feels almost like a warning. The only thing i have against the book is the ending. The last 20 pages felt very rushed to me, and left me a bit un satisfied. even though it ended in one of the only two possible endings, it just felt forced. Still a great book. My fav of bradbury is the October country though