Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and “firemen” burn any that are found.
The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
Fahrenheit 451 was written by Bradbury during the Second Red Scare and the McCarthy era, inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. Bradbury’s claimed motivation for writing the novel has changed multiple times.
In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote the book because of his concerns about the threat of burning books in the United States.
In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In a 1994 interview, Bradbury cited political correctness as an allegory for the censorship in the book, calling it “the real enemy these days” and labeling it as “thought control and freedom of speech control”.
The writing and theme within Fahrenheit 451 was explored by Bradbury in some of his previous short stories. Between 1947 and 1948, Bradbury wrote “Bright Phoenix”, a short story about a librarian who confronts a “Chief Censor”, who burns books. An encounter Bradbury had in 1949 with the police inspired him to write the short story “The Pedestrian” in 1951.
In “The Pedestrian”, a man going for a nighttime walk in his neighborhood is harassed and detained by the police. In the society of “The Pedestrian”, citizens are expected to watch television as a leisurely activity, a detail that would be included in Fahrenheit 451.
Elements of both “Bright Phoenix” and “The Pedestrian” would be combined into The Fireman, a novella published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951.
Bradbury was urged by Stanley Kauffmann, an editor at Ballantine Books, to make The Fireman into a full novel. Bradbury finished the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and the novel was published later that year.
Upon its release, Fahrenheit 451 was a critical success, albeit with notable dissenters; the novel’s subject matter led to its censorship in apartheid South Africa and various schools in the United States. In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal.
It later won the Prometheus “Hall of Fame” Award in 1984 and a “Retro” Hugo Award in 2004. Bradbury was honored with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.
The novel has been adapted into films, stage plays, and video games. Film adaptations of the novel include a 1966 film directed by François Truffaut starring Oskar Werner as Guy Montag and a 2018 television film directed by Ramin Bahrani starring Michael B. Jordan as Montag, both of which received a mixed critical reception.
Bradbury himself published a stage play version in 1979 and helped develop a 1984 interactive fiction video game of the same name, as well as a collection of his short stories titled A Pleasure to Burn. Two BBC Radio dramatizations were also produced.
Historical and biographical context
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), formed in 1938 to investigate American citizens and organizations suspected of having communist ties, held hearings in 1947 to investigate alleged communist influence in Hollywood movie-making.
The government’s interference in the affairs of artists and creative types infuriated Bradbury; he was concerned about the workings of his government, and a late 1949 nighttime encounter with an overzealous police officer would inspire Bradbury to write “The Pedestrian”, a short story which would go on to become “The Fireman” and then Fahrenheit 451. The rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s McCarthyism persecution of accused communists, beginning in 1950, deepened Bradbury’s contempt for government overreach.
The Golden Age of Radio occurred between the early 1920s to the late 1950s, during Bradbury’s early life, while the transition to the Golden Age of Television began right around the time he started to work on the stories that would eventually lead to Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury saw these forms of media as a threat to the reading of books, indeed as a threat to society, as he believed they could act as a distraction from important affairs. This contempt for mass media and technology would express itself through Mildred and her friends and is an important theme in the book.
Bradbury’s lifelong passion for books began at an early age. After he graduated from high school, his family could not afford for him to attend college, so Bradbury began spending time at the Los Angeles Public Library where he educated himself.
As a frequent visitor to his local libraries in the 1920s and 1930s, he recalls being disappointed because they did not stock popular science fiction novels, like those of H. G. Wells, because, at the time, they were not deemed literary enough. Between this and learning about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, a great impression was made on Bradbury about the vulnerability of books to censure and destruction.
Later, as a teenager, Bradbury was horrified by the Nazi book burnings stating, “When I was fifteen years old, Hitler burned books in the streets of Berlin. And it terrified me”.
Bradbury was also influenced by Joseph Stalin’s campaign of political repression, the Great Purge, in which writers and poets, among many others, were arrested and often executed, stating, “They burned the authors instead of the books.”
Plot summary
“The Hearth and the Salamander”
In a distant future, Guy Montag is a fireman employed to burn outlawed books, along with the houses they are hidden in. One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbor Clarisse McClellan, a teenage girl whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and perceived happiness.
Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. Two EMTs pump her stomach and change her blood. After they leave to rescue another overdose victim, Montag overhears Clarisse and her family talking about their illiterate society.
Shortly afterward, Montag’s mind is bombarded with Clarisse’s subversive thoughts and the memory of Mildred’s near-death. Over the next few days, Clarisse meets Montag each night as he walks home. Clarisse’s simple pleasures and interests make her an outcast among her peers, and she is forced to go to therapy for her behavior. Montag looks forward to the meetings, but one day, Clarisse goes missing.
In the following days, while he and other firemen are ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman and drenching it in kerosene, Montag steals a book.
The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match and burn herself alive. Jarred by the suicide, Montag returns home and hides the book under his pillow. Montag asks Mildred if she has heard anything about Clarisse.
She reveals that Clarisse’s family moved away after Clarisse was hit by a speeding car and died four days ago. Dismayed by her failure to mention this earlier, Montag uneasily tries to fall asleep. Outside he suspects the presence of “The Mechanical Hound”, an eight-legged robotic dog-like creature that resides in the firehouse and aids the firemen in hunting book hoarders.
Montag awakens ill the next morning. Mildred tries to care for her husband but finds herself more involved in the “parlor wall” entertainment in the living room – large televisions filling the walls. Montag suggests he should take a break from being a fireman, and Mildred panics over the thought of losing the house and her parlor wall “family”.
Captain Beatty, Montag’s fire chief, visits Montag to see how he is doing. Sensing his concerns, Beatty recounts the history of how books had lost their value and how the firemen were adapted for their current role: over decades, people began to embrace new media (like film and television), sports, and an ever-quickening pace of life.
Books were abridged or degraded to accommodate shorter attention spans. At the same time, advances in technology resulted in nearly all buildings being made with fireproof materials, and firemen preventing fires were no longer necessary.
The government then instead turned the firemen into officers of society’s peace of mind: instead of putting out fires, they were charged with starting them, specifically to burn books, which were condemned as sources of confusing and depressing thoughts that complicated people’s lives.
After an awkward exchange between Mildred and Montag over the book hidden under his pillow, Beatty becomes suspicious and casually adds a passing threat before leaving; he says that if a fireman had a book, he would be asked to burn it within the following twenty-four hours. If he refused, the other firemen would come and burn it for him. The encounter leaves Montag shaken.
Montag reveals to Mildred that, over the last year, he has accumulated books that are hidden in their ceiling. In a panic, Mildred grabs a book and rushes to throw it in the kitchen incinerator, but Montag subdues her and says they are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and their lives will return to normal.
“The Sieve and the Sand”
Mildred refuses to go along with Montag’s plan, questioning why she or anyone else should care about books. Montag goes on a rant about Mildred’s suicide attempt, Clarisse’s disappearance and death, the woman who burned herself, and the imminent war that goes ignored by the masses. He suggests that perhaps the books of the past have messages that can save society from its own destruction. Mildred remains unconvinced.
Conceding
