This is a story about a man named Guy Montag
who is a fireman.
He's not a fireman by today's standards though.
Instead of putting out fires, he starts them
by burning books, which are outlawed by the
government.
After talking to his neighbor, Clarisse, Guy
begins to question his work.
He looks around and sees a wife who doesn't
love him and an entire society caught up in
technology and war.
People kill each other every day and no one
seems to care.
After learning that Clarisse died, Guy further
begins to question whether or not he is doing
the right thing by burning books.
So much so, that he steals a book before burning
a lady and pile of books.
His fire captain, Beatty, notices changes
in Guy and watches him carefully.
Guy reveals to his wife that he's had a small
collection of books in their house and they
try to read them together, but his wife is
disinterested.
Guy meets an old English professor, Faber,
and they decide to fight the government.
Meanwhile, when Guy is at work, they get an
alarm that books have been discovered.
Surprisingly, the firemen end up at Guy's
house.
Guy is forced to burn all of his books with
a flamethrower, but then kills Beatty when
provoked.
He grabs what books he can and runs to Faber's
house for a last goodbye.
The government has a full televised search
for Guy, even using a mechanical search dog
to track him.
Guy makes it out of the city and travels down
the river, where he meets a group of runaways.
There, he learns that they all have memorized
books, a human library of literature.
In the end, the runaways see the city being
destroyed by enemy bombs and prepare for the
grim future.
So why does this society not like books?
What did book ever do to people?
In this society, people have chosen to not
read books.
It's that simple.
The majority of people stopped reading and
instead wanted entertainment with bite-sized
portions of educational information.
From there, the government decided that books
should be banned because books contained conflicting
ideas that brought about arguments and conflicts.
So rather than have a marketplace of ideas,
the government wanted to streamline thinking
so that everyone thought the same way.
And what's scary is that this doesn't seem
too farfetched to happen in real life.
Most importantly, this story tries to answer
the question: Why are books so important?
As Faber discusses with Guy, books are valuable
for three reasons.
The first is that books hold quality information.
The second reason is that books require time
to read them, a commitment.
And the third reason is that we have the ability
to react to our world based on what we, as
readers, gain from the read material.
That the words in books are not just lifeless
words, but carry meaning that has real life
application in our lives.
It's not just that this old dead guy wrote
some things for me to have to read hundreds
of years later, but how do those words apply
to our society today?
Even though technology has advanced our world,
we still tend to see the same human problems
from the past, so it seems that technology
makes our lives easier, but doesn't really
solve many of our most basic problems, like
war, disease, and poverty.
It is quite scary how the author could have
imagined some of the technology that we find
ourselves using today.
In the story, the society has fast cars, mechanical
dogs, large TV screens, reality TV, bluetooth,
and a host of other technologies.
It makes you wonder how far we are from a
world without books.
