In September, we will be reading Fahrenheit 451.
Please post your thoughts and questions in this thread.
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In September, we will be reading Fahrenheit 451.
Please post your thoughts and questions in this thread.
I read it in my third year at Stirling, which would make it 1995. I *remember* bits, though, they stuck with me. The way some people had chosen to memorize books to pass them onto future generations, so one of them was Plato, the other was Shakespeare, another was Virgil. Also, the medical men that visited the protagonist's wife and simply attached a machine to her which brought her back to life after she had died. And the dogs on the motorway, put there deliberately by the government so that drivers could have fun hitting them.
Blimey. Don't the years go by fast. :(
Regards
I'll be re-reading it in a week or so. Hopefully a good discussion develops. :nod:
Hey everyone, hope you don't mind if I join this reading group. I'll order a copy of 451 this weekend and have it shipped so I might be a little late in adding to the discussion.
Paul
Of course you're welcome, Paul. :)
I finished rereading it today, I'm really not too fond of Bradbury's novels.
Why not?
I don't know, there's always an unmistakably pulpish quality to Bradbury's writing. If it didn't take itself so seriously, it might have a bit of a campy fun appeal to it, like a Heilein novel. However, Bradbury never quite gets that, instead you get firemen burning things as a completely serious metaphor.
Overall, it works fairly well as a sort of light fun old sci-fi novel. It unfortunately lacks the sort of astute social criticism of Brave New World or 1984, instead it is more of a banal complaint about the base nature of the masses and an expression of Luddite fears of modern media. Much of it is also rehashed from A Brave New World with nothing new added to it except for the pulp fiction action elements.
This is my first time reading the book, and I haven't got that far yet, but I can see where you are coming from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
I am enjoying reading the book all in all, and I do like the prose style of it and while on the one hand the irony of a fireman who burns things I thought was interesting, but it is also simplistic and it does seem to lack the more intricate complexity which is usually found in dystopian novels.
As of right now I really don't have a sense of what is really going on, only bits and pieces are offered to give a glimpse of the world in which the book is set in and a reference to another time when things were different. But I presume as the story progresses it will begin to develop more of just what has issued, and how/why it came about.
I get your point, OrphanPip. Personally, I try hard not to directly compare dystopian novels because it always comes down to "author x is doing what y does, but not as good." The two "major players" - BNW and 1984 - are so often compared and I find most of the time a person will prefer the one he/she read first.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
As to Fahrenheit 451 - while it is not as dense in regards to social commentary as others - I really enjoyed it and found that it has a lot to offer in such a small story, told so simply. What I particularly like is that the oppressive rulers are hardly directly present in the story, even though you know they're there. This allows for the focus to to be not "we do what we're told because someone is watching over us and controlling us" but more a reflection on critical thought.
There are some aspects of the novel that do not hold up well - technology has far surpassed anything the novel envisions - but that being said, particularly in regards to the way books are treated, there is still some excellent points to be taken from the novel.
And finally - it's fun. I thought it was really fun, and lacked that "constantly beat you over the head with philosophy" that overpowers so many dystopian novels.
I'm really looking forward to re-reading this. Last time I read it, I found the prose to be quite lyrical, but I also read it years ago (before reading 1984 and Brave New World) so maybe some of its originality will be lost for me.
I'm about half way through, and I agree with the general consensus so far. it doesn't express a lot of ideas about the society and how it got like that. In those terms it is a sinpler tale compared to someone like China Mieville who populates the novels with a great extravagant texture. I feel spoiled as a result, and I expect more from a new drawn world. I am enjoying it though.
Waiting for my copy still...
Can I join? I have the book but I'm just starting it; I might be reading slowly because school is beginning again.
It's very short, it only took me 3 hours to read.
Just ordered my copy, shipping soon. No copies at library except an adaptation. Anyone heard of that?
I'd say the same about 1984 after having read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Orwell gets a lot of credit for rehashing someone else's idea. Fortunately for Orwell, We is not that well know.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
We - an overview
I thought it was good, but the ending is simplistic. Perhaps it's an unfair criticism 30 years on, but a world war conveniantly wipes out the frivolous and oppressive society leaving it open for the tramps to re-educate. Despite the explanations of difficulty, it leaves aclean slate to begin again without any complexity.
After reading it again, this is still a favorite of mine. I get the complaint of over-seriousness (though, I think there are still humorous sections), but I find the writing to be beautiful. I love Bradbury's poetic prose. And while it does borrow a lot from other dystopian novels, I think it takes an original look at this type of society, i.e., from the point of view of the people who destroy the art that is deemed dangerous, how they destroy it (I found the descriptions of the fire particularly well done), and why they do it. The only real complaint against the book is that it's dated, but so is almost every sci-fi book from the 50s, so I don't hold that against it.
Also, as to the comment about the convenient ending, I never got the impression that. . .
(SPOILER)
. . . just because that town was destroyed, that the whole of the oppressive society was destroyed. I think it was just meant to seal Guy's fate.
I liked the use of fie in the descriptions too - particularly as it changes with his circumstances - the warm tramp's fire for example.
agreed. Also the contrast between fire and water is done very well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
I also thought the scene where he is riding the train, and the droning voice of the news (or whatever it is) droning on and on slowly drives him nuts. Bradbury really did a good job of getting the feel of that down, and he does this quite consistently. It's why I like his writing.
I found the excerpt:
Quote:
He was on the subway.
I'm numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill-bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine.
The numbness will go away, he thought. It'll take time, but I'll do it, or Faber will do it for me. Someone somewhere will give me back the old face and the old hands the way they were. Even the smile, he thought, the old burnt-in smile, that's gone. I'm lost without it.
The subway fled past him, cream-tile, jet-black, cream-tile, jet-black, numerals and darkness, more darkness and the total adding itself.
Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, "Fill this sieve and you'll get a dime!" `And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks.
Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. But he read and the words fell through, and he thought, in a few hours, there will be Beatty, and here will be me handing this over, so no phrase must escape me, each line must be memorized. I will myself to do it.
He clenched the book in his fists.
Trumpets blared.
"Denham's Dentrifice."
Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field.
"Denham's Dentifrice."
They toil not-
"Denham's--"
Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up.
"Dentifrice ! "
He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking.
"Denham's. Spelled : D-E.N "
They toil not, neither do they . . .
A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve.
"Denham's does it!"
Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies...
"Denham's dental detergent."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The people who had been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham's Dentifrice, Denham's Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham's Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice. The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people were pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great air-train fell down its shaft in the earth.
"Lilies of the field." "Denham's."
"Lilies, I said!"
The people stared.
"Call the guard."
"The man's off--"
"Knoll View!"
The train hissed to its stop.
"Knoll View!" A cry.
"Denham's." A whisper.
Montag's mouth barely moved. "Lilies..."
The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then .did he leap past the other passengers, screaming in his mind, plunge through the slicing door only in time. He ran on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet-move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifted after him, "Denham's Denham's Denham's," the train hissed like a snake. The train vanished in its hole.
I am finally starting to read it... Whohoo! :willy_nilly:
Thank you for choosing such an amazing book. I've enjoyed reading it.
back with more soon
After reviewing the parts I've underlined, I can say that Bradbury had a great vision of the future. Although I agree with the many people's conclusion that the novel is about censorship, I believe he also blamed the people themselves for ignoring reading/contemplating and going after trifle stuff such as watching TV 24/7.
Also -as a teacher- I admired his criticism/ satire of education
That really was one of the best parts I liked.Quote:
"Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around .... I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal."
That's all for now.
It does feel a bit as if he's constructed the story from a series of set pieces. I agree that the Dentrifice satire is well done. I was also trying to see how the three walled TV would work. It seemed passive -I suppose the tech for interactivity wasn't thought of then. But the novel moves from his encounters with the girl, to disatisfaction with his home life and expectations, to the firestation. All the ideas are good, but they seem stitched together. The hound is the only bit where we can anticipate a future conflict - though we realise quite quickly that Montag is not happy with the book burning. One sequence follows another without any sophisticated narrative storytelling. Perhaps I've been spoilt.:D
Even if Bradbury anticipated more interactiveness with technology (even though it is there, as the characters of the shows talk and ask questions of the viewer), I doubt he would've included it in his future world, as being sedentary and near-brain dead watching the TV walls was largely the point. The TV walls seemed more like a drug than anything else, putting the viewer in their own weird, zombie world. When asked, Guy's wife couldn't even begin to give a plot summary of anything she watched.
I also think Bradbury was a stronger short-story writer than novelist, and what you said above, Paul, kind of shows how it seems hard for him to get out of that fragmented type of story-telling. But, like I said, to me Bradbury's greatest strength lies in his prose.
I find it strains credulity a little too much for me, which is a problem considering, according to Bradbury himself, we're meant to take this novel as something "real" that could actually happen. Ironically, for a writer associated with sci-fi, Bradbury is a pretty spectacular Luddite. He's never gotten a driver's license or flown on an air plane.
I like Bradbury's short fiction though, I've read most of his short story collections and he has produced a number of gems.
On a related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM
Edit: I will say that I think Fahrenheit is a much better novel than Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Why does it strain credulity for you? Just because of the technology, or thematically?
Funny vid.
I really enjoyed Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I read it in high school.
I think Bradbury assumes people are much weaker willed and stupider than they really are. There's too much of a smug sense of superiority that runs through the novel. I'm not saying this is a terrible novel, just that is not a particularly brilliant novel either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I agree with what Mutatis-Mutandi stated previously about the prose of the book. I really enjoy the way it is written in that regard. There are some very beautiful descriptions within the book, and at times it is even almost poetic. There also seems to be a certain sparseness in how it is written which is something that I often enjoy in books. I do liked the sort of minimalist approach.
I also agree with Mutatis-Mutandi about the originality in the book in the way in which it is told from the point of view of the "destroyers" so to speak. I love books which offer the reader unconventional perspectives and allow us to see things from varying different points of view. I like the way in which the books does sort of force the reader into being sympathetic towards Montag, when he would ordinarily be seen as the bad guy.
I like the sort of working man picture we are given of him. He is not the one who is in charge, and he himself is just trying to do his job without any reason for him to question the rightness or wrongness of what he is doing, becasue he has never known the world to be any different. Yet he does have his moments of struggle and questioning in which he is not completely at ease with his conscious.
But in some way's it feels as if this book is more of a character study than really an examination of soceity becaue there is still not presented a clear idea of just what is taking place, or the reasons for how things got to that point. Thus far the only insight that has really been offered is that there are fireman that go around burning books, there is still no indication of what the ones who have created this world are aiming to acomplish with thier censorship.
And though we are given indications that things were not always like this, there is still no offered explanation for how they had come to be this way.
So it is an interesting look into the life, thoughts, feelings, of Montag, but still I do not have a clear picture of what is happening outside of that.
And while the whole idea about having the fireman now being the ones to start fire, I thought was a bit of an interesting concept, at the same time, it did seem to be a bit cartoonish that nothing else about being a fireman seemed to have changed or evolved. I could not help but feel that it was a bit silly to have the firemen sliding down the poles still, to rush off and start a fire.
Another thing I did not quite understand, is why the have to completely burn down some ones entire house if it is the books they are after. Is it meant to be a punishment? or are they jut too lazy to take the books out of the house and burn them in the street? It seems like a bit of overkill that they find a book in someones house so they burn the whole house down.
The idea I took from that is that the books are an infection which spread to the people in the house. Burning the books is not enough to erase them (as demonstrated by the book-memorizing professors) - so you must destroy everything - the more destroyed the better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
As for the context of the society - I have to believe that he purposely decided not to reveal the back story to the war - probably in attempt to make it seem more realistic. We don't know exactly how this started - so maybe it could happen to us?
Now that you mention, that does make me think back to when Montag had his wife's stomach pumped when she swallowed the sleeping pills. The people who came to do it made a statement of that similar affect. That you have to take out all of the bad blood and put in new blood becasue if they leave anything behind than the mind can still become infected, or something close to that effect.Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Darnay
That it would not do any good if they only removed the poison of the pills, but everything had to be taken out to truly cleanse the person.
So it is similar with the books in this case. As you stated, it would not be enough to simply just remove the books, becasue they have already begun to spread their poison, so everything must be burned down thus forcing the people to buy a new home and start completely afresh.
I kind of like that there's no back story to how the society became the way it is. It would have just been exposition, and it would have been, quite likely, extremely unoriginal, so I think it was a good idea to just leave it out. We can make inferences.
*deleted*
I've been a bit negative, I feel, about the book, and perhaps not refelcted how much I liked it whilst reading. I'm going to make another negative though.I don't feel he fairly reflects people generally. They are presented as weak and almost hypnotised by
the adverts and the TVs.
I think people are much more complex than having existential crises hidden which only emerge in suicide attempts. I think a great number of us are naturally subversive - not actually lawbreakers - but law benders. We also see the women as weak. The only positive one is Clarissa McClellan, and she comes across as a bit of a dippy hippy from our perspectve here.
Yeah, but the people have become much weaker mentally do to the societal conditions. Now, whether the societal conditions could cause such a drastic behavioral change is a whole other issue.
One must also consider the context of the time this came out, right when TV was becoming popular. He was taking a leap in predicting how bad it would become (and I doubt he would admit that he really believed this was going to be the future), and, honestly, he isn't that far off--statistics showing how much time people spend watching TV is proof enough. Also take in to account the quality of programming. People now watch "reality TV," which makes even the worst of sitcoms seem artistic. People do often zombify in front of the TV.
And, as a reversal on Paul's statement, I think I've been a bit over-positive. I don't know how other people do the rating system above, but I rate purely on enjoyment. If I had to rate in an objective sense as to the quality of the book (or at least as objective as is possible) it'd be a 3 or 5.
In the 60s and 70s people were "very concerned" about the effects TV would have on the kids - from scare stories about developing square eyes to moral concerns about the possibility of weakened wills. You get the same kinds of things said nowadays about about computers and games consoles. The same generation that's supposed to be vegetating in front of the computer screen was organising and getting out to riot only last month.
Yeah, I don't get the whole "technology is desensitizing kids" argument. Allegedly, it's supposed to be destroying kids' ability to interacte face-to-face, even making it so they don't smile because they aren't used to actually showing physical emotion. After teaching high school for a semester, they seemed pretty normal to me.
I finished this recently and I agree with some of the things Orphan Pip and Paulclem said.
I thought the ending was weak and overly convenient ... A group of homeless people walking places, warming themselves, observing nature, and somehow restoring art to a degenerated society? It seems a little trite.
I hope this doesn't sound too stupid, but I thought some of the passages were inserted solely to expound Bradbury's theory, and did not really flow with the text. Others seemed a bit too rushed: for instance, when Clarisse asks Montag if he is happy at the very beginning. There is not enough leading up to it.
About his style – I liked some of his prose, but not the beginning. He spent too much time describing Clarisse repeatedly in clichéd adjectives without enough verbs to hold them together.
This sounds a bit negative but I did enjoy some of his ideas. I haven't read Brave New World or 1984 yet so I don't know how they compare.
Really? I would argue that, if anything, they exaggerate emotion. There are a host of girls who giggle or cry perpetually only to attract attention. It irritates me considerably.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Technology does impact kids negatively. In a way some of what Bradbury writes is true. Maybe it's less apparent in adults, but a lot of the people I know have very short attention spans, and they are painfully trivial. Increasingly they do not care about the world around them. They mock anything they do not understand. Everything from the past can rot; they only care for pop singers, Facebook and video games. Also, they throw words around so casually it's disturbing. Everyone is anorexic. I got a 99.9% and now I'm depressed so I'm going to kill myself. BFFLS! The next day: I hate you, I want to kill you. Or: I love you forever and I'd die for you, I'm going to marry you, even if I have to wait a lifetime I'll do it. One week later – I hate you!!! You ruined my life! You broke my heart, DO YOU HEAR ME?!?!! And then, shortly after: I'm in love again ... It's the most wonderful feeling ever!!!!
I have an idea most of them don't really know love, hate, depression, suicide, or anything, and are only reenacting drama from an adult TV show.