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Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1953. It is regarded as one of his best works.
The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The book's tagline explains the title:
"Fahrenheit 451 – the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns."
The lead character is a fireman named Montag who becomes disillusioned with the role of censoring works and destroying knowledge,
eventually quitting his job and joining a resistance group who memorize and share the world's greatest literary and cultural works.
The novel has been the subject of interpretations focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas.
In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451, because of his concerns
at the time about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years,
he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In 1954,
Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It has
since won the Prometheus "Hall of Fame" Award in 1984 and a 1954 "Retro" Hugo Award, one of only five Best Novel Retro Hugos ever given,
in 2004. Bradbury was honored with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.
Adaptations include François Truffaut's 1966 film adaptation of the novel and a 1982 BBC Radio dramatization.
Bradbury published a stage play version in 1979 and helped develop a 1984 interactive fiction computer game titled Fahrenheit 451,
and a collection of his short stories, A Pleasure to Burn. HBO released a television film based on the novel in 2018.
Plot summary
Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unspecified city at an unspecified time in the future after the year 1960. The novel is divided into three parts:
"The Hearth and the Salamander", "The Sieve and the Sand", and "Burning Bright".
"The Hearth and the Salamander"
Guy Montag is a "fireman" employed to burn the possessions of those who read outlawed books. He is married and has no children.
One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbor, a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals
and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness. Montag returns home
to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. Two uncaring EMTs come over
to pump Mildred's stomach, drain her poisoned blood, and fill her with new blood. After the EMTs leave to rescue another overdose victim,
Montag watches over Mildred, watching the new blood fill her pallid cheeks. Montag then goes outside, overhearing Clarisse
and her family talk about the way life is in this hedonistic, illiterate society. Montag's mind is bombarded with Clarisse's subversive thoughts
and the memory of his wife's near-death. The next day, Montag finds Mildred in the kitchen, with no memory of what happened
and talking incessantly about being hungry from an alleged hangover she has from a party she thought she attended last night.
Over the next few days, Clarisse faithfully meets Montag as he walks home. She tells him about how her simple pleasures
and interests make her an outcast among her peers and how she's forced to go to therapy for her behavior and thoughts. Montag looks forward
to these meetings, and just as he begins to expect them, Clarisse goes absent. He senses something is wrong. In the following days, while at work
with the other firemen ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman before the inevitable burning,
Montag steals a book before any of his coworkers notice. The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match
and burn herself alive. Montag returns home jarred by the woman's suicide. While getting ready for bed, he hides the stolen book under his pillow.
Still shaken by the night's events, he attempts to make conversation with Mildred, starting by asking her when they first met and where. Mildred goes
to answer, but immediately forgets. As she laughs off her ignorance and heads for the bathroom to take more sleeping pills,
Montag realizes just how much Mildred's sleeping pill addiction, love of vapid, interactive entertainment, and fast,
reckless driving has ruined her mind and their marriage. Later, as Mildred is sleeping, Montag wakes her up and asks her if she has seen
or heard anything about Clarisse McClellan.
Mildred initially brushes off the question until she finally reveals what happened: Clarisse's family moved away after Clarisse got 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 Hound", an eight-legged robotic dog-like creature that resides in the firehouse and aids the firemen.
Montag awakens ill the next morning, with Mildred nagging him to get up and go to work. As Mildred tries to care for her husband,
Montag suggests that maybe he should take a break from being a fireman after what happened last night. Mildred panics
over the thought of losing the house and her parlor wall family and angrily blames the old woman who killed herself over her books
for Montag's change of heart over his job. Captain Beatty, Montag's fire chief, personally visits Montag to see how he is doing.
Sensing Montag's concerns, Beatty recounts how books lost their value and where the firemen fit in: over the course of several decades,
people embraced new media, sports, and a quickening pace of life. Books were ruthlessly abridged or degraded
to accommodate a short attention span while minority groups protested over the controversial, outdated content perceived to be found in literature.
The government took advantage of this by turning the firemen into officers of people's peace of mind. After an awkward encounter between Millie
and Montag over the book hidden under Montag's pillow, Beatty is suspicious that Montag may have a book.
Beatty casually adds a passing threat as he leaves, telling Montag that if a fireman had a book, he would be asked
to burn it within the next 24 hours. If not, the other firemen would come and burn his house down for him. Despite the subtlety of the statement,
the encounter leaves Montag shaken. He then decides to take action once and for all. After Beatty has left, Montag reveals to Mildred that,
over the last year, he has accumulated a stash of books that he has kept hidden in their air-conditioning duct. In a panic, Mildred grabs a book
and rushes to throw it in their kitchen incinerator. Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books
to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned, and all will return to normal.
"The Sieve and the Sand"
While Montag and Mildred are perusing the stolen books, a sniffing occurs at their front door.
Montag recognizes it as The Hound while Mildred passes it off as a random dog. They resume their discussion once the sound ceases,
but Mildred refuses to go along with it, 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 old woman who burned herself,
and the constant din of bombers flying overhead and the imminent threat of war that goes ignored by the masses.
He then states that maybe the books of the past have messages that can save society from its own destruction. The conversation is interrupted
by a call from Mildred's friend, Mrs. Bowles, and they set up a date to watch the "parlor walls" that night at Mildred's house. Montag, meanwhile,
concedes that Mildred is a lost cause and he will need help to understand the books.
Montag remembers an old man named Faber he once met in a park a year ago, an English professor before books were banned. He telephones Faber
with questions about books, and Faber soon hangs up on him. Undeterred, Montag makes a subway trip to Faber's home along
with a rare copy of the Bible, the book he stole at the woman's house. He tries to read it on the way, but gets distracted by a radio jingle
for Denham's Dentifrice and nearly goes insane. Once he arrives at Faber's house, Montag forces the scared and reluctant Faber into helping him
by methodically ripping pages from the Bible. Faber concedes and gives Montag a homemade ear-piece communicator so he can offer constant guidance.
After Montag returns home, Mildred's friends, Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps, arrive to watch the "parlor walls".
Not interested in this insipid entertainment, Montag turns off the walls and tries to engage the women in meaningful conversation, only for them
to reveal just how indifferent, ignorant, and callous they are about the upcoming war, the thought of losing loved ones to death,
their unruly children, and who they voted for in the last election. Enraged by their idiocy, Montag leaves momentarily and returns
with a book of poetry. This confuses the women and alarms Faber, who is listening remotely. Mildred tries
to dismiss Montag's actions as a tradition fireman do once a year: they find a book from the past and read it as a way
to make fun of how silly the past is. Montag proceeds to recite the poem Dover Beach, causing Mrs. Phelps to cry.
At the behest of Faber in the ear-piece, Montag burns the book. Mildred's friends leave in disgust, while Mildred locks herself in the bathroom
and takes more sleeping pills. In the aftermath of the parlor party, Montag hides his books in his backyard before returning to the firehouse late
at night with just the stolen Bible. He finds Beatty playing cards with the other firemen. Montag hands Beatty a book to cover
for the one he believes Beatty knows he stole the night before, which is unceremoniously tossed into the trash.
Beatty tells Montag that he had a dream in which they fought endlessly by quoting books to each other. In describing the dream Beatty reveals that,
despite his disillusionment, he was once an enthusiastic reader. A fire alarm sounds, and Beatty picks up the address from the dispatcher system.
They drive in the firetruck recklessly to the destination. Montag is stunned when the truck arrives at his house.
"Burning Bright"
Beatty orders Montag to destroy his own house, telling him that his wife and her friends reported him after what happened the other night.
Montag watches as Mildred walks out of the house, too traumatized about losing her parlor wall family to even acknowledge her husband's existence
or the situation going on around her, and catches a taxi, never once looking back. Montag obeys the chief, destroying the home piece by piece
with a flamethrower. As soon as he has incinerated the house, Beatty discovers Montag's ear-piece and plans to hunt down Faber.
Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and burns his boss alive, and knocks his coworkers unconscious. As Montag escapes the scene,
the firehouse's Mechanical Hound attacks him, managing to inject his leg with a tranquilizer. He destroys the Hound with the flamethrower
and limps away. Before he escapes, however, he realizes that Beatty had wanted to die a long time ago and had purposely goaded Montag,
as well as provided him with a weapon. Montag runs through the city streets towards Faber's house. Faber urges him to make his way
to the countryside and contact the exiled book-lovers who live there. He mentions he will be leaving on an early bus heading to St. Louis
and that he and Montag can rendezvous there later. On Faber's television, they watch news reports of another Mechanical Hound being released,
with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. After wiping his scent from around the house in hopes of thwarting the Hound,
Montag leaves Faber's house. He escapes the manhunt by wading into a river and floating downstream. Montag leaves the river in the countryside,
where he meets the exiled drifters, led by a man named Granger. Granger shows Montag the ongoing manhunt on a portable battery TV,
and predicts that Montag will be caught within the next few minutes. As predicted, an innocent man is then caught and killed.
The drifters are all former intellectuals. They have each memorized books should the day come that society comes to an end,
then rebuilds itself anew; this time, with the survivors learning to embrace the literature of the past.
While learning the philosophy of the exiles, Montag and the group watch helplessly as bombers fly overhead and annihilate the city
with nuclear weapons. While Faber would have left on the early bus, everyone else was immediately killed. Montag and the group are injured
and dirtied, but manage to survive the shock wave. The following morning, Granger teaches Montag and the others about the legendary phoenix
and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth. He adds that the phoenix must have some relationship to mankind,
which constantly repeats its mistakes. Granger explains that man has something the phoenix does not: mankind can remember its mistakes and try never
to repeat them. Granger then muses that a large factory of mirrors should be built, so that way people can take a long look at themselves
and reflect on their lives. When the meal is over, the exiles return to the city to rebuild society.
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