True story: Ray Bradbury wrote this book in
nine days, on a rented typewriter that he
had to pay (by the half hour!) to use.
No wonder the plot of Fahrenheit 451 races
along at such a breakneck speed.
Guy Montag is a fireman.
But not the kind that puts out fires.
The kind that starts them.
He burns books for a living.
And the houses that house the books.
And sometimes the people who own the houses.
Then Guy meets his new neighbor, Clarisse,
a girl who thinks for herself and who wakes
him up to the idea that things could be different
...
Can you hear the alarm bells?
Can you see the fire licking at Guy's heels?
That's because, in a morally-bankrupt society
like Guy's, it's hard to have a moral transformation
and not go unnoticed.
Beatty, the fire chief, discovers that Guy's
been squirreling away the books he's supposed
to burn.
He discovers Guy's connection with a book-loving
professor named Faber.
And then?
Here's where the rented typewriter comes in.
Can you see Bradbury's fingers flying?
Montag torches Beatty, becomes a fugitive,
is chased through the city by a mechanical
hound (otherwise known as the killing machine),
escapes to the country, hooks up with a bunch
of intellectual outcasts, watches an apocalypse
and ...
Ding!
I guess time must have been up, because the
story ends with Montag walking off with his
fellow book-lovers into the sunshine.
