Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eerie reflection on our American culture today, April 28, 2005
Fahrenheit 451 is a book with incredible meaning for our American culture today. It begins in an unknown city somewhere in America in years and decades directly after the McCarthy era levels of censorship. Media has become the center of American culture, and many people's parlor walls are covered with giant, super-enhanced HDTVs, lowering their level of interaction with each other to almost nothing in respect to both its quantity and its quality. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman, but he has never actually put out a fire in his life (at least not intentionally). All houses have been permanently fireproofed with plastic sheaths for nearly 50 years, and the jobs of firemen have been changed from protecting the public from fire to "protecting" the public with fire. As reality TV, comedy shows and pulp fiction/romance novels became more and more popular, non-fiction and the classics were read less and less until, as Captain Beatty, the fire captain and primary personified villain of the novel, says, "(Most people's) sole knowledge of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: 'now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors.'" As public interest in books, newspapers, and other sources of information waned, the school system and general level of education grew less and less complex/competent, until eventually the government took advantage of the situation and began cutting off all books which "offended" any minority, no matter how small, proclaiming equal treatment for all and the evils of literature loudly. In order to enforce this ban which the people had so perfectly brought down upon themselves, the government changed the fire department into its secret police, stating that they were protecting the public from the "harm" of these books while truly cutting them off from the only source of knowledge able to save them from the impending but largely ignored or unconcerning massive international atomic war. As Guy races against time, the odds, and the power of the government and its incredibly seductive mass media, he attempts to break through to someone, trying to find some way to destroy the killer system before it's too late. Can he destroy the system with the help of an old retired English professor named Faber? Or will Captain Beatty and the government's deadly Mechanical Hound catch up with him first? The playing out and ultimate conclusion of this conflict is an incredibly deep and powerful reflection on our American culture today, and on our seemingly insatiable desire for pleasure and entertainment without having to do any more work or self-education/learning in order to get it than we see as being absolutely necessary. Written in McCarthy era America before the dawn of the television, the rise of televised NFL and ESPN, and the surrealistic and ever growing worlds of video games, movies and the Internet, Fahrenheit 451 predicts with eerie accuracy directions in our culture which 50 years ago would have been regarded as impossible science fiction dystopia, but now are considered an ever growing part of normal daily life. As the quality of our public school system continues to decline, and fast cars, pornography, and having fun with friends quickly become more important than keeping on top of government, state, or even local affairs for the vast majority of the American population, one might stop to wonder between one's job and the entertainments we all seem to live for and rush home to every night why we're doing anything like this-what is it we really value in life? In Montag's world, the sources for those values have been taken away, sacrificed to the peoples' ever-growing and insatiable desire for pleasure. Will--or could--our civilization go the same way, walking blindly to the very edge of a worldwide atomic war? Judge for yourself after reading America's fate in the incredible future-predicting novel Fahrenheit 451.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Fahrenheit 451, February 28, 2005
Love stories are about the heat of the moment and there can be 451 degrees of heat between a person and their love for books. In the well-known novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The story takes place in the near future at a town were the fire fighters don't put out the fires they start them. The fire fighters have five rules that they need to stick to 1) answer the alarm quickly 2) start the fire swiftly 3) burn every thing 4) report back to fire house immediately 5) stand alert for other alarms. So when the fire fighters hear the siren it means that someone in town has been caught with a book in their house. It is the fire fighters job to race down to the house and light it on fire whether the person living there is in or out of the house. Guy Montag, one of the fire fighters that takes pleasure in burning books is confronted one day by one of his new neighbors Clarisse McClellan a seventeen year old, she meets up with Guy a few times, but in their short time period's together Guy's world is thrown upside down. Clarisse questions him and tackles him about his job. She asks him what's the point and why does he do it. What's so wrong with book? His reply is that books are illegal. After all of the questions Guy became curious and takes books away from the burning pile. Little by little he starts wondering what was wrong with books, so he asked a professor to teach him.
Ray Bradbury born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. Ray wrote Fahrenheit 451 when he was 22 and has won many awards for his writing such as the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award (1954), and the Aviation-Space Writer's Association Award for Best Space Article in an American Magazine (1967), the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. His work was also included in the Best American Short Stories collections for 1946, 1948 and 1952.He has won all of these awards because he writes with a breathtaking style. This book has a fabulous plot that makes you think about what might happen in the future years if people keep watching more and more television and reading fewer and fewer books.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Fever 1793, May 10, 2004
Living in philadelphia could not have been any more boring or easy. A teenager by the name of Mattie runs away from everyday house chores and never wants to work at the family owned coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. She dreams of making the coffee shop the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. Until... disease sweeps Philadelphia right off it's feet. Fever breaks out throughout all of the town, into homes, shops, streets, and cities. The fever that has been smothering Philadelphia is called the Yellow Fever. The fever kills everything in it's way seeming as if it was coming straight to Mattie and her family. Can Mattie and her family survive the most devastating thing that has spread throughout Philadelphia in the blink of a yellow eye. Her diary Fever 1793 tells it all. It keeps the reader in great suspense throughout the entire novel making them contemplate what will happen next in the story.
In the story Mattie is living a normal teenage life when the Fever hits. She is forced to stay and watch over her old grandfather and not see her mother because she catches the fever. Her mother ends up temporarily moving away when her fever symptoms worsen, so that Mattie does not catch it from her. Everyday after that Mattie wakes up thinking if her mother is still alive. She now takes care of her funny grandfather as well as taking care for herself day by day. As the plot rages on Mattie becomes a more mature girl turning into a responsible young woman at the end. She has to face the daily challenges of seeing friends die and lifeless corpses lying on the ground in the streets. She learns to live with the Fever around her by learning survival techniques her grandfather teaches her. He teaches her how to shop for good food, know that moss only grows on one side of the tree, how to be herself and most important how to survive the fever. Mattie and her grandfather try to escape the fever diseased town but the police end up not letting them get out of the town on account that they might have it and spread it to other people and places. As time goes on a little the Fever gets worse, hospitals are overworked and overloaded, all shops are closed. No one can buy newspapers to know what's going on, all grocery, and clothing stores are closed because the owners do not want to catch the disease. This makes everything in the town worse people starved and broken because of the loss of work.
A large incident in the story is when Mattie and her grandfather come back to the coffee shop to find the store windows broken and the entire shop ruined into pieces. Disgusting teenagers and other people rob stores when the owners are away in hiding from the fever, such as Mattie and her grandfather. Almost everything in the coffee shop is gone except for the hidden money case. But the next thing you know two new teenage robbers come but find that Mattie and her grandfather are in the store. The two boys go after Mattie because she has the money jar in her hands but grandfather tries to defend her by fighting them and does a pretty good job at it. But the boys were young with a lot of energy and they would not give up. Grandfather soon got tired and the boys started to beat on him. Mattie secretly took the gun and tried to shoot the boy but missed. And now the boys started to go after Mattie with a knife but grandfather jumped in the way and got stabbed by one of the boys. As soon as the two boys realize what they have done they run away.
So if you love books that keep your heart beating fast; or if you enjoy a fun filled adventurous book; or even a book that can make you cry; than the book Fever 1793 is right book for you.
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