Farenheit 451

Summary

In a futuristic world, the job of firemen, ironically, is to start fires instead of putting them out. Books are banned and if any are found, the houses are burned.

Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a fireman and he loves his job, never questioning anything about the world he lives in until he meets a very “strange” Clarisse who makes him do the unthinkable — feel and smile, think and question everything about life — at least — life as he knows it.

Montag starts reading in secret and wants to learn how to read and finds an old English Professor whom he thinks can help him and also discovers that there is a quiet underground rebellion.

How I discovered it?

Despite being the book-nerd I claim to be (sometimes, I am though) I have somehow gotten through high school, university, and all my life without reading this book. I was told about this book when I was in school and I knew it was in our library. I vaguely remember picking this book up but I never got past the first few pages of the book after writing it off as too depressing for my younger self.

I completely forgot about the existence of this book until recently, when I was reading Perks of a Wallflower and somehow after a long-winded rabbit hole on the internet (you know it, we have all been there), and multiple Reddit threads of similar books, I once again came across this book and I knew, it had to go on onto my reading pile.

🧠 Thoughts?

One of the main themes of Fahrenheit 451 is censorship and technology. The novel talks about the burning of books to control the population and its thoughts to an extent that free thoughts can no longer be formed and people only know what they are allowed to know. Everyone is told what to think and what to feel as they are only fed one narrative.

Of course, the book is about an extreme situation of excessively controlled media, but what makes it frightening is that this feels very real in the current world we live in. Living in a world where mass media and TV are dominating influences for a majority of the population, this kind of hits closer to home right now.

Even though historically there has been book burning, and it could happen again, somehow, with this constant inter-connectedness with the internet, the way we could lose books and good literature forever, seems like a much more real possibility. A frightening possibility. And with this story, I have been able to feel the fear and despair that comes with this kind of government control that is not within my power. And how easy it is to be complacent.

I think a crazy thing about this novel was that it was written in 1953 before the internet became what it is today, and it still somehow managed to hit a lot of notes of an extreme outcome of what we are already facing today.

He has brought to light how easy it is for so many people to listen to numerous narratives and how it could be overwhelming. And how it is often more accessible to be complacent by muting all of them and only feeding one report so that people can be blinded and able to see only one narrative. The author uses so many powerful metaphors in this book that work well in this day.

The story also shows how interactions with real people reduce as online interactions increase and not necessarily in a good light. Personally, I would disagree with the way it was written in the book. I have been able to make more friends, learn so much more about culture and experience things through the internet that I would not have been able to otherwise. So in a way, to me, this book felt like a hyperbole about what kind of society we could live in, but is it realistic? I am not sure about that.

The novel itself feels like a declaration of love for books by the author. Most times it is undeniable this theme resonates within almost every interaction of the characters or the prose of the book. However, there is also a moment of clarity within the novel itself where Montag is told, that is not books themselves that are important, but what comes from them. And I think this was a good point that did come from the novel — that the understanding of life, the literature — that all of this was indeed found in books, but it didn’t have to be. It could be in anything, as long as you choose it.

What did I like about it?

The writing, oh, the writing! Absolute poetry in prose. The powerful prose is beautifully woven together for the story. Every word was so well written. The unexpected twist to the book is about how one would save the books that are being burned. I did not expect it, and I was pleasantly surprised.

There were a lot of metaphors carried out throughout the book, and every second of the character’s thoughts and overthinking put down in the books, which I loved. Seeing how the human brain thinks so many thoughts, sometimes incoherent and imperfect is what made me love the writing style in the book.

What I didn’t like about it?

The characters are quite flat, with not much development throughout the book. The story was a lot more focused on the message rather than the development of the characters.

The ending of the book was really bleak. I think my teenage self already guessed it and hence the avoidance of reading the book until now. The ending doesn’t feel like a real ending to me, it feels like a story half done. Maybe, after all, that was the intention of the author.

The book definitely focused on the message rather than the story itself. So I think this threw uneven pacing throughout the story. The story itself was split into 3 parts, and the first 2 parts were slow and exploratory. The 3rd part, the ending, was too quickly gone and threw me off.

The story felt like there was always a major rebellion coming up, or something larger, so the ending did not match the expectations set up earlier in the book. The ending gives no hope to the reader after the entire setup, so finishing the book felt like a hopeless letdown.

Favourite Quotes?

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from how it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”

“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.”

Conclusion

Rating: I would give the book a 4 out of 5 stars.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes dystopian sci-fi novels. All in all, the base story of the novel was intriguing and the way it was written was definitely powerful and intense.