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Fahrenheit 451

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Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's dystopian soft science fiction novel, was first published in 1953. The concept began with the 1947 short story "Bright Phoenix" that was only later published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963. The original short story was reworked into the novella, The Fireman, and published in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The novel was also serialized in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy Magazine. It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.

The novel presents a future in which all books are restricted, individuals are anti-social and hedonistic, and critical thought is suppressed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper autoignites. A movie version of the novel was released in 1966, and it is anticipated that a second version will begin filming in 2008. At least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.

Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.

Bradbury has stated that the entirety of his novel was written in the basement of UCLA's Powell library on a pay typewriter. His original intention in writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries. He has often referred to Montag as an allusion to himself.

Plot summary

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an unspecified future time in a hedonistic and rabidly anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control and bans the reading of books. Anyone caught owning them is, at the minimum, confined in a mental hospital and has the books confiscated and burned. At the maximum, the penalty is a sentence to immediate death. People are now only entertained by in-ear radio and an interactive form of television. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman, certain that his job—burning books, and the houses that hold them, and persecuting those who own them—is the right thing to do.

It is by chance that one night he meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life, his ideals, and his own perceived happiness; it is later claimed she has been killed in a car accident.

While ransacking the house of an old woman preceding its burning, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books: "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine." This prompts him to steal a book. The woman then refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match she had concealed from the firemen's view, prematurely igniting the kerosene that they had doused around the house and martyring herself in the process. This disturbs Montag greatly.

While he is at home pretending to be sick and pondering his thoughts, he is visited by his fire Chief (see below) Captain Beatty, who elucidates for him the political and social reasons behind the existence of his occupation. Captain Beatty claims it was society, in its search for happiness, that brought about the suppression of literature through an act of self-censorship and that the totalitarian government acting as opportunists merely took advantage of the situation. Beatty says that all firemen are bound to steal a book at one time or another and that they can turn it in or burn it within 24 hours. Montag argues with his wife over the book, showing his growing disgust for her and for his society.

It is soon revealed that Montag has hidden dozens of books in the house, and he tries to memorize them so their contents can be preserved, but becomes frustrated that the words seem to simply fall away. He then remembers a man he had met at one time: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, and Faber begins teaching Montag about the general vagaries and ambiguities but overall importance of literature in the attempt to rationalize human existence. He also gives Montag a green bullet-shaped ear-piece so that Faber can guide him throughout his daily activities.

Montag returns to the fire house and gives Beatty a book. During a card game, Beatty tells Montag he had a dream about him, and relates the literary argument he says they had in his dream. He quotes many books and shows a thorough knowledge of literature, but he uses that knowledge to defend the firemen's role. Then there is yet another call to arms, and Beatty theatrically leads the crew to Montag's own home. He reveals that he knew all along of Montag's books, and charges Montag himself to destroy the house. Montag goes to work, but is not content only to destroy the books. He burns the televisions and other emblems of his ignorant past life. When Beatty realizes Montag has a compatriot in Faber, he threatens to track him down. Montag then burns and kills Beatty, knocks out two other firemen, and is soon pursued by the authorities for these crimes.

He flees to Faber's house, with a cybernetic hound and television network helicopters in pursuit, hoping to document his escape as a spectacle with the intent of distracting the people from the oncoming threat of war, a threat that has been forboded throughout the book. Faber tells him of vagabond book-lovers in the countryside. Then Montag, having washed off his scent in a local river, floats downstream and meets such a group—mostly older men—who, to Montag's astonishment, have memorized entire books, to be preserved orally until books are allowed again. They themselves burn the books they read to prevent them from being discovered; the true books are safely stored in their minds. The group leader, Granger, discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth; he says the phoenix must be some relation of mankind.

At this point the war begins, and Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead to attack the city. His wife, Mildred, is most probably killed. It is implied that the bombs are nuclear, a bitter irony that the world that sought to burn thought is burned itself. At the moment of the explosion, the stress and emotion of seeing the city burned causes key phrases from some of the books he has read to emerge from the depths of his memory. Montag then rejoins the group. The novel is concluded with a shocking but slightly optimistic tone. It is suggested that the society Montag knew has almost completely collapsed and a new society must be built from scratch. But there is doubt as to whether this new society may befall the same fate.

Characters

  • Guy Montag is the protagonist and fireman (see above) whose metamorphosis is illustrated throughout the book and who presents the dystopia through the eyes of a loyal worker to it, a man in conflict about it, and one resolved to be free of it. Bradbury notes in his afterword that he noticed, after the book was published, that Montag is the name of a paper company. Ironically, in the years after the book was published a company called Montaug (pronounced the same way as the character's name) began manufacturing ovens although no link to the book is known.
  • Faber is a former English professor who represents those who know what is being done is wrong, but is too fearful to act. Bradbury notes in his coda that Faber is part of the name of a German manufacturer of pencils, Faber-Castell.
  • Mildred Montag is Montag's wife, who tries to hide her own emptiness and fear of questioning her surroundings or herself with meaningless chatter and a constant barrage of television. She constantly tries to reach the glorified state of happiness, but is inwardly miserable. Mildred even makes an attempt at suicide early on in the book by overdosing on sleeping pills. She is used symbolically as the opposite of Clarisse McClellan. She is known as Linda Montag in the 1966 film.
  • Clarisse McClellan displays every trait Mildred does not. She is outgoing, naturally cheerful, unorthodox, and intuitive. She serves as the wake-up call for Guy Montag, by posing the question “why?” to him. She is unpopular among peers, and disliked by teachers for (as she puts it) asking why instead of how, and focusing on nature rather than technology. Montag always regards her as odd until she goes missing; the book gives no definitive explanation. But it is said that Captain Beatty and Mildred know that Clarisse has been killed by a car. Her behavior is similar to that of Leonard Mead from Bradbury's short story The Pedestrian. Her uncle, who presumably taught her to be like this, may be an allusion to that short story, as he was once arrested for being a pedestrian.
  • Captain Beatty is Montag's boss and the fire chief. Once an avid reader himself, life tragedies made him hate books. He is disgusted with the idea of books and detests how they all contradict and refute each other. In a scene written years later by Bradbury for the Fahrenheit 451 play, he invites Guy to his house where he shows him walls of books which he leaves to molder on their shelves. He tries to entice Guy back into the book-burning business, but is burned to death by Montag when he underestimates Montag's resolve. Guy later realizes that Beatty might have wanted to die and provoked Guy until he did it. He is the symbolic opposite of Granger.
  • Granger is the leader of a group of wandering intellectual exiles, who memorize books so they will be saved. Where Beatty destroys, he preserves; where Beatty uses fire for the purpose of burning, he uses it for the purpose of warming. His acceptance of Montag is considered the final step in Montag's metamorphosis, from embracing Beatty's ultimate value, happiness and complacency, to embracing his value of love of knowledge.
  • Mechanical Hound The mechanical hound exists in the original book but not in the 1966 film. It is an emotionless 8-legged killing machine that can be programmed to seek out and destroy free thinkers, hunting them down by scent. It can remember as many as 10,000 scents of others it is tracking down. The hound is blind to anything but the destruction for which it is programmed. It has a proboscis in a sheath on its snout, which injects lethal amounts of morphine or procaine. Although Montag was able to survive it, he suffered horrible pain for a short time. The first hound encountered in the novel is destroyed when Montag sets it on fire with a flamethrower. The second was programmed to find a man called Montag for the amusment of viewers of a short televised chase. Bradbury notes in his afterword that the hound is "my robot clone of A. Conan Doyle's great Baskerville beast," referring to the famous Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles.
  • Mildred's friends (Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps) Mildred's friends represent the average citizens in the numbed society that is described throughout the novel. They are examples of the people in this society who are not happy, but do not think they are unhappy. When they are introduced to literature, which symbolizes the pain and joy that has been censored from them, Mrs. Phelps is overwhelmed by the rush of emotion that she has not felt before.

Themes

The novel reflects several major concerns of the time of its writing, which has led to many interpreting it differently than intended by Bradbury (see "Censorship and the effects of mass media" below). Amongst the themes attributed to the novel were what Bradbury has called "the thought-destroying force" of censorship in the 1950s, the book-burnings in Nazi Germany starting in 1933 and the horrible consequences of the explosion of a nuclear weapon. "I meant all kinds of tyrannies anywhere in the world at any time, right, left, or middle", Bradbury has said.

Other themes attributed to the novel are:

One particularly ironic circumstance is that, unbeknownst to Bradbury, his publisher released a censored edition in 1967 that eliminated the words "damn" and "hell" for distribution to schools. Later editions with all words restored include a coda from the author describing this event and further thoughts on censorship and "well-meaning" revisionism.

Censorship and the effects of mass media

The novel is frequently interpreted as being critical of state-sponsored censorship, but Bradbury has been known to dispute this interpretation. He says in a 2007 interview that the book explored the effects of television and mass media on the reading of literature.

Bradbury still has a lot to say, especially about how people do not understand his most famous literary work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. ... Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

Yet in the paperback edition released in 1979, Bradbury wrote a new coda for the book containing multiple comments on censorship and its relation to the novel. The coda is also present in the 1987 mass market paperback, which is still in print.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse….Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. ... Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.

On another occasion, Bradbury observed that the novel touches on the alienation of people by media:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

Films

1966 film

Fahrenheit 451 was a film written and directed by François Truffaut and starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. The film was released in 1966.

Future film

In July 1994, a new film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 began development with the studio Warner Bros. and actor Mel Gibson, who planned to star in the lead role. Scripts were written by Bradbury, Tony Puryear, and Terry Hayes. With the project estimated to be expensive and Gibson believing himself too old to portray the film's protagonist Guy Montag, the actor decided in 1997 to instead direct the film. By 1999, he had planned to begin filming with actor Brad Pitt in the lead role, but Gibson was forced to postpone due to Pitt's unavailability. Actor Tom Cruise was also approached for the lead role, but a deal was never made. According to Gibson, there was difficulty in finding a script that would be appropriate for the film, and that with the advent of computers, the concept of book-burning in a futuristic period may no longer work. Tom Hanks is reportedly set to play the lead in the film.

In February 2001, the project was revived as director Frank Darabont entered negotiations with Warner Bros. to rewrite Terry Hayes's script and direct the film. Gibson was confirmed to be involved only as a producer, and Darabont planned to complete the script by the end of 2002. In July 2004, Darabont said that he had completed the script and hoped to begin filming Fahrenheit 451 after completing a script for Mission: Impossible III. Darabont did not begin Fahrenheit 451 immediately, instead going on to direct The Mist. The director said in November 2006 that he would do long-term preparation work for Fahrenheit 451 while filming The Mist and hoped that he would begin filming after The Mist was completed.

In August 2007, Darabont expressed his intent to film Fahrenheit 451 in the summer of 2008, and that he would place the story's setting in an "intentionally nebulous" future, approximately 50 years from the contemporary period. The director described the story's contemporary relevance: "Fahrenheit 451 is more relevant today than [when] it was published 50 years ago. George [W.] Bush has made this the most relevant piece of literature ever written." Darabont planned to keep certain elements from the book, such as the mechanical hound, in the film. The director did not comment on rumors of Tom Hanks as Guy Montag. The director said that the protagonist had been cast and would be announced soon.

Allusions and references in other works

The title of Bradbury's book has become a well-known byword amongst those who oppose censorship, in much the way George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World have (although not to the same extent). As such, it has been alluded to many times, including in the ACLU's 1997 white paper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning? and Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Bradbury objected to the latter's allusion to his work, claiming that Moore "stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission.

Artist Micah Wright used the theme "Hand all books to your local fireman for safe disposal" overlaid on a 1940s fireman propaganda poster.

Hungarian poet György Faludy includes the lines in the opening stanza of his 1983 poem "Learn by Heart This Poem of Mine": "Learn by heart this poem of mine, / Books only last a little time, / And this one will be borrowed, scarred, [...] / Or slowly brown and self-combust, / When climbing Fahrenheit has got / To 451, for that's how hot / it will be when your town burns down. / Learn by heart this poem of mine.

The rat things, cybernetic guard dogs in Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, are closely related to Bradbury's mechanical hounds.

The theme and plot of the movie Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Sean Bean and Dominic Purcell, draws heavily from Fahrenheit 451, as well as from 1984 and Brave New World.

Ray Bradbury also alludes to himself in his book Let's All Kill Constance as the main character, a writer, thinks about writing a book about a "hero who smells of kerosene" and muses about the possibility of books being used to start fires in the future.

The character of Sonmi~451 in David Mitchell's dystopia Cloud Atlas is likely to be a reference to Fahrenheit 451. The main theme evolving around her is the importance of literature as a cornerstone of human culture and society.

Gui Montag, a flamethrower-wielding hero Firebat in the real-time strategy game StarCraft, is named after Montag.

Stephen Colbert's 2007 book I Am America (And So Can You!) "won" a "Stephen T. Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence." The seal is a book on fire, a reference to F 451's book burning. A dozen of these seals are included in the book for the reader to "nominate" other books for this award.

in R.O.D. the tv's episode 16, all the books from jimbo-cho are gathered and burned in an event entitled operation Fahrenheit 451

Dozens of other references to the novel occur in television, music, and video games.

Printings

"The Fireman" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Vol. 1 No. 5, February 1951)

First edition (1953) – This edition was actually published in three formats, and included two short stories: "The Playground" and "And the Rock Cried Out"

  • Paperback (Ballantine No. 41) – The true first edition, preceding the hardcovers by six weeks.
  • Standard hardcover – Limited to about 4,500 copies.
  • Asbestos hardcover – Just over 200 copies were signed and numbered, before being bound in "Johns-Manville Quinterra," a fire resistant asbestos material.

Later editions:

  • Serialized version (Playboy, March, April, & May 1954)
  • First British hardcover edition (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954) – Title novel only.
  • Science Fiction Book Club (London, 1955) – Title novel only.
  • First British paperback edition (Corgi No. T389, 1957) – Title novel only.
  • Student edition (Bal-Hi, 1967) – Includes a two page "Note to Teachers and Parents" by Richard Tyre. Reprinted ten times through 1973.
  • Hardcover edition (Simon & Schuster, 1967) – Full contents of the first edition (novel and two short stories) with a new introduction by Bradbury.
  • Special Book Club edition (1976)
  • Hardcover edition (Del Rey Gold Seal, 1981) – Issued without a dust jacket, and includes "Investing Dimes", an afterword by Bradbury.
  • Hardcover edition (Limited Editions Club, 1982) – Issued in a slipcase without a dust jacket, and includes an original lithograph and three fold-out color plates by Joseph Mugnaini. 2000 copies were signed by Bradbury & Mugnaini.
  • Large print cloth edition (G K Hall & Co., 1988, ISBN 0745171060)
  • Hardcover edition (Buccaneer Books, 1995, ISBN 089968484X) – Issued without a dust jacket, and includes the "Investing Dimes" afterword, and a "Coda" by Bradbury.
  • 40th anniversary cloth edition (Simon & Schuster, 1996) – Limited to 7500 copies, with 500 signed and numbered by Bradbury.
  • Trade paper edition (Del Rey, 1996, ISBN 0345410017)
  • Mass-market paperback edition (Del Rey, ISBN 0345342968)In Canada:
  • First Edition - February 1963
  • Seventh Printing - October 1972

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Bustard, Ned (2004), Fahrenheit 451 Comprehension Guide, Veritas Press.

External links



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