It was a pleasure to burn—
or so Guy Montag believes
at the start of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451.
In my case,
it was a pleasure to re-read this book and,
I have to admit,
the older I get,
the more relevant this book becomes
despite the fact that it celebrates its 65th
anniversary in 2018.
Guy Montag is a fireman of the future—
he and his team burn books,
and set fire to the possessions
of those citizens hiding books.
The calls always come at night,
and the spectacle of living fire
mixed with the charcoal remains of history
draw onlookers from all around.
He does his job and he doesn’t ask questions.
He loves it, he thinks.
One night, as he’s returning from the fire
station,
Montag encounters Clarisse McClellan,
his unusual sixteen-year-old neighbour
who manages to burn his life to the
ground
with a single question—
are you happy?
What does it mean to be happy
in an age of distraction?
Can we be happy
if we refuse to dip below the surface
of our thoughts and emotions?
If we isolate ourselves with technology,
how can we create meaningful relationships
with the people around us?
If we only focus
on our own fun and entertainment,
and refuse to challenge ourselves
and question our view of the world,
can we even say we’re still alive anymore?
Fahrenheit 451 is a mere 150 pages,
and Bradbury covers all of these topics and
more,
and I love the fact that this book
is still sparking these discussions almost
65 years later.
I never read Fahrenheit 451 in school,
and I wonder how I might have reacted
to it had a read it as a teenager.
I think it may have fallen into the same camp
as 1984,
which totally blew my mind at sixteen.
Most people tend to think of Fahrenheit 451
as the book about censorship,
or the book about book burning,
and while both of those are true to a degree,
Bradbury actually points to real danger of
distraction.
There’s the iconic moment
where Montag finds himself on the train,
desperately trying to memorize the Book of
Revelation,
and he can’t hear himself think
over the sound of the Denham’s Dentifrice
jingle
blaring through the train.
He’s been conditioned to think at such a
shallow level,
he doesn't even understand what he’s reading,
he’s just trying to memorize as much as possible
before the book could be taken and burned.
But his own environment is breaking down his
ability to think.
We see it in the technology that Mildred,
Montag’s wife, loves to use—
she’s the one with the fabulous TV parlor
where she sits and listens to “the family”
scream at her,
even though she doesn’t know what
they’re screaming about;
she also uses Seashells,
which sound a lot like earbuds,
to listen to the buzz of voices and music
instead of sleeping.
I used to think Bradbury was so harsh
in his depiction of Mildred
and most of the women in the novel,
mostly because they represent the willfully
ignorant—
they’re the ones who don’t want to think,
and don’t want to be enlightened,
and just want to have fun.
And yet, I had totally forgotten about
one moment, and I’m so glad I re-read this—
when we first meet Mildred,
she’s overdosed on sleeping pills,
and Montag has to call some people
to pump her stomach and give her a blood transfusion.
She never mentions this episode to him afterwards.
The following week,
Montag pretends to be sick
in order to avoid going to work,
and Mildred’s upset because he’s breaking
his routine.
He yells at her and says
“How long is it since you were really bothered?
About something important, about something
real?”
This is the moment I forgot—
He realizes there’s a Mildred somewhere
inside of her
who's deeply bothered
and knows there’s something horribly wrong
with the world,
but her voice has withered
and her thoughts have been tamped down for
so long,
she doesn’t even know they exist.
But her love for technology and entertainment
masks the pain,
and allows her to disengage from those unwanted
emotions.
I don’t know that I would have picked up
on that as a teen,
I think I would have just hated Mildred outright.
But, I get her this time around.
This is why I support re-reading books.
There’s an academic in hiding called Faber
in this book,
and he summarizes things beautifully—
it’s not to books themselves that we need,
but better quality information,
the dedicated quiet time
to sit and think about that information,
and the right to carry out actions
based on what’s learned from the first two.
In this world, the public chose to stop reading,
and chose to stop thinking,
and the firemen are nothing more than the
circus
come to town.
So Booktube, keep reading
and keep talking about big ideas—
we might save the world one day.
Overall, I gave this re-read four out of five
stars.
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On that note, signing off.
There's the iconic moment when Montag is sitting on the train, jesh—
Okay, "JESH".
"JESH-PERATELY"!
