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Fahrenheit 451: A Novel by [Ray Bradbury]

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Fahrenheit 451: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Ray Bradbury (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

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167 pages
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English
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Simon & Schuster
Publication date

November 29, 2011
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10621 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brilliant . . . Startling and ingenious . . . Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.” —Orville Prescott, The New York Times

“A masterpiece . . . A glorious American classic everyone should read: It’s life-changing if you read it as a teen, and still stunning when you reread it as an adult.” —Alice Hoffman, The Boston Globe

“One of this country’s most beloved writers . . . A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

About the Author

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Amazon.com Review

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

''Frightening in its implications . . . Mr. Bradbury's account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.'' --New York Times

''[A] great science-fiction classic . . . (Audiobook narrator) Christopher Hurt reads this provocative story with the natural and compelling grace that it deserves.'' --Land Line (five-star review) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. After years of working as a fireman--one who burns books and enjoys his work--Guy Montag meets a young girl who makes him question his profession and the values of the society in which he lives. Stephan Hoye's narration is perfectly matched to the subject matter: his tone is low and ominous, and his cadence shifts with the prose to ratchet up tension and suspense. He produces spot-on voices, and his versions of the gruff Captain Beatty, the playful Clarisse, and the fearful professor Faber are especially impressive. A Ballantine paperback. (Aug.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

"Was it always like this?" Guy Montag asks. "Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than ... get them going?" Thus Montag begins to examine himself and his world, a world ominously like our own, hurtling mindlessly through sensory overload to its own destruction. More than the story, reader William Roberts is added reason to re-examine this '50's classic. Roberts creates character like a virtuoso actor. While the males--Montag, Beatty and Faber--are voiced individually, all females except Clarisse, are characterized as thin, whining and insipid. They, above all, typify the barrenness of this self-destructive world. Thus, Fahrenheit 451 becomes a lively and believable morality play for young head-setters. P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showered luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole. At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs.

He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.

Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name.

The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. Perhaps his nose detected a faint perfume, perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands, on his face, felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person’s standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten degrees for an instant. There was no understanding it. Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak.

But now tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting?

He turned the corner.

The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered. He almost thought he heard the motion of her hands as she walked, and the infinitely small sound now, the white stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the pavement waiting.

The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain. The girl stopped and looked as if she might pull back in surprise, but instead stood regarding Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive that he felt he had said something quite wonderful. But he knew his mouth had only moved to say hello, and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix disc on his chest, he spoke again.

“Of course,” he said, “you’re our new neighbor, aren’t you?”

“And you must be”—she raised her eyes from his professional symbols “—the fireman.” Her voice trailed off.

“How oddly you say that.”

“I’d—I’d have known it with my eyes shut,” she said, slowly.

“What—the smell of kerosene? My wife always complains,” he laughed. “You never wash it off completely.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, in awe.

He felt she was walking in a circle about him, turning him end for end, shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets, without once moving herself.

“Kerosene,” he said, because the silence had lengthened, “is nothing but perfume to me.”

“Does it seem like that, really?”

“Of course. Why not?”

She gave herself time to think of it. “I don’t know.” She turned to face the sidewalk going toward their homes. “Do you mind if I walk back with you? I’m Clarisse McClellan.”

“Clarisse. Guy Montag. Come along. What are you doing out so late wandering around? How old are you?”

They walked in the warm-cool blowing night on the silvered pavement and there was the faintest breath of fresh apricots and strawberries in the air, and he looked around and realized this was quite impossible, so late in the year.

There was only the girl walking with him now, her face bright as snow in the moonlight, and he knew she was working his questions around, seeking the best answers she could possibly give.

“Well,” she said, “I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane. Isn’t this a nice time of night to walk? I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise.”

They walked on again in silence and finally she said, thoughtfully, “You know, I’m not afraid of you at all.”

He was surprised. “Why should you be?”

“So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean. But you’re just a man, after all . . .”

He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and grew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon . . .

And then Clarisse McClellan said:

“Do you mind if I ask? How long’ve you worked at being a fireman?”

“Since I was twenty, ten years ago.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”

He laughed. “That’s against the law!”

“Oh. Of course.”

“It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”

They walked still farther and the girl said, “Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?”

“No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”

“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”

He laughed.

She glanced quickly over. “Why are you laughing?”

“I don’t know.” He started to laugh again and stopped. “Why?”

“You laugh when I haven’t been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I’ve asked you.”

He stopped walking. “You are an odd one,” he said, looking at her. “Haven’t you any respect?”

“I don’t mean to be insulting. It’s just I love to watch people too much, I guess.”

“Well, doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char-colored sleeve.

“Yes,” she whispered. She increased her pace. “Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way?”

“You’re changing the subject!”

“I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly,” she said. “If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?”<br... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do.... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

More New and Revised Titles. The Best Just Got Better! Plus Glossary from Webster's New World^™ Dictionary Anthem Atlas Shrugged Beowulf Brave New World The Canterbury Tales The Catcher in the Rye The Contender The Crucible The Fountainhead Frankenstein The Grapes of Wrath Great Expectations The Great Gatsby Hamlet Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer Huckleberry Finn The Iliad Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Inherit the Wind Jane Eyre Julius Caesar The Killer Angels King Lear The Lord of the Flies Macbeth 1984 The Odyssey Oedipus Trilogy The Once and Future King Othello The Outsiders Pride and Prejudice The Red Badge of Courage Romeo and Juliet The Scarlet Letter A Separate Peace A Tale of Two Cities To Kill a Mockingbird Wuthering Heights See inside for the complete line-up of available CliffsNotes! Check Out the All-New CliffsNotes Guides To AOL^®, iMac^™, eBay^™, Windows^® 98, Investing, Creating Web Pages, and more! More Than Notes! CliffsComplete^™ CliffsTestPrep^™ CliffsQuickReview^™ CliffsAP^™ Over 300 CliffsNotes Available @ cliffsnotes.com Downloadable 24 hours a day Free daily e-mail newsletters Free tips, tricks, and trivia Free online CliffsNotes catalog Free self-assessment tools Freeware and shareware downloads --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
There are some books that no matter how long ago you've read them, details
from the story stick in your mind. Farenheit 451 was like that for me. I
was 15 when I first checked it out from the high school library. I hadn't
really gotten very far into the book when a cute guy noticed I was carrying
it around school.
"Good book," he commented.
"Yeah, I'm still reading it," I answered. Wow, I thought, approval from an
older guy. That gave me the incentive to finish what turned out to be one
of the most important sf novels ever written.
It's been more than 20 years since I've spoken to but I'll always feel
grateful to him whenever I hear about bookburnings. His tiny bit of
encouragement introduced me to one of the genre's finest writers.

--Amy Stout, Consulting Editor --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

Christophe Montenez interprète avec énergie ce classique de la science-fiction, ode intemporelle à la lecture et à la curiosité. Durée d'écoute : environ 5 h. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

'Another indispensible classic' The Times 'Fahrenheit 451 is the most skilfully drawn of all science fiction's conformist hells' Kingsley Amis 'Bradbury's is a very great and unusual talent' Christopher Isherwood 'Ray Bradbury has a powerful and mysterious imagination which would undoubtedly earn the respect of Edgar Allen Poe' Guardian 'It is impossible not to admire the vigour of his prose, similes and metaphors constantly cascading from his imagination' Spectator 'As a science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury has long been streets ahead of anyone else' Daily Telegraph 'No other writer uses language with greater originality and zest. he seems to be a American Dylan Thomas -- with dsicipline' Sunday Telegraph --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0064CPN7I
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Media Tie-In edition (November 29, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 29, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 10621 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 167 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #6,394 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #15 in Literary Satire Fiction
- #15 in Movie Tie-In Fiction
- #16 in Classic Science Fiction eBooks

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Ray Bradbury
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In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."
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Top reviews from the United States

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If all you get out of this book is the "removal" of books from society to become more connected to our electronic devices I feel so bad for you

Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2017

This is a must read book!! But I will say that I have a totally different point of view to the story than what most, in fact, all the reviews and editorials I have seen. I am not a bookworm and so the idea that books are gone is not an apocalyptic idea. The book was written before the internet and the information age. It is WHY the books are burned and WHAT the books represent that should open your eyes and minds while reading this book.

If all you get out of this book is the "removal" of books from society to become more connected to our electronic devices I feel so bad for you.

The point of burning the books is explained. I might give just a couple of spoilers, but everyone knows the premise of 1984 and this book is similar. It is so much more than about books.

It is about censorship and the people wanting it. The government has banned all printed material except for comic books, 3D pornographic magazines, "good old confessions" and trade journals. All other printed material is deemed too offensive to someone. So much in-fighting in society because everyone claiming something offends them. So to make everyone happy, the offensive materials are removed. Because of the year this was written (1953) Ray Bradbury could have not envisioned the internet. If he had, it would have been heavily censored also. In 1953 ideas and knowledge were shared through print as they had been for hundreds of years.

According to the book, the people wanted the offensive materials removed. Because everyone is offended by something then everything is offensive, it must all be destroyed.

For me the novel rings true about how easily people are offended by another person's ideas, thoughts, actions, beliefs. In the story those things are still allowed (they can't control what you think), but without being able to write them down ideas and thoughts die pretty fast.

Ultimately the story is about freedom and not being so judgmental of others lest ye be judged. If you look around today, 11/4/2017, this story has never been more relevant. We have protests and attacks in the streets daily based on ideals and beliefs that clash with others. These clashes occur, rather than people going their separate ways and understanding that the beliefs and ideals of others are just as legitimate as their own. Some groups would rather have a scorched earth policy and destroy everything they hold dear, as long as the other side loses everything as well.

563 people found this helpful

Anonymous shopper

Numerous text errors in this print edition.

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

Of all books. I'm disappointed, Simon & Schuster. Of all books.

How am I supposed to read a book about a dystopian future where books are forbidden, deemed a danger to society, summarized, digested, and then silenced, and not trust you to publish an accurate copy of the author's original work?

I found two errors by the time I reached page 53, and only because they are glaringly obvious. Having not read the book before I have no idea how else the work has deviated from the author's source material.

Page 37 - "Master Ridley," said Montag a last.

A last? What is that? "A" should be "at."

This one is particularly egregious:

Page 53 - "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored."

Gradually gradually? Really, really? There should only be one occurrence of the word.

I am disappointed, at best. It is now upon me to return this book and find an accurate replacement. The onus to find accurate text in published works should not be on the consumer.

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98 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

Never read this before and have always wanted to. Got to this point and noticed the page numbers jumped from 18 to 47. Am I just dumb and this is how the book was written, or am I actually missing pages? Any help would be much appreciated.

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141 people found this helpful

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house"

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

'It was a pleasure to burn.'

It's such a famous opening line and despite the fact that I'd never read Fahrenheit 451, one I've seemed to know for the longest time. It would crop up every so often in my life, usually at trivia nights. I knew it was a classic book, the type reluctant schoolchildren are assigned to read as part of their curriculum. As a progressive I always felt I was doing it a disservice by not reading it, so I set out to buy it on Amazon and finished it in under a day.

Let's tackle the plot first.

It's set in a Mid-West American city in a dystopian future. Our hero, Guy Montag, is a fireman except firemen in the future don't put out fires, they cause them. Books are forbidden and if any are discovered they are burned, including the house hiding them. Montag has no qualms with this, until one day he's called out to the house of an elderly lady. She chooses to set fire to herself and her house before Montag can do it. Shaken to the core by this, he tries to share it with his wife Mildred, but she's too addicted to vapid and superficial television shows to engage in conversation. Her big concern is getting a fourth TV. The only person he develops a connection to is his teenage neighbour, Clarisse. She's free-spirited and questions him constantly. One day she goes missing. Mildred casually tells him that Clarisse is dead.

Montag starts to wonder if books are really so bad. He steals a book of poetry from a house he's called out to burn. His chief begins to grow suspicious of him and pontificates about the dangers of books and independent thinking. Montag begins to feel rebellious as he rails against the hedonistic nature of society. One night Mildred invites some girlfriends over. Montag rashly brings his book out and recites poetry to them, moving one woman to tears. The others are mortified and Montag finds himself in serious trouble. I'll stop here before spoilers creep in.

I was interested to learn Bradbury's inspiration for this book. Apparently he was once out walking at night with a fellow writer when a police car pulled up and an officer got out. He asked Bradbury what he was doing, to which he responded that he was walking, "Putting one foot in front of the other." The officer was unamused with what he considered a smark aleck response and told him never to do it again. Bradbury was so angry that he went home and wrote a short story about a man who lived in a time when walking was considered a crime. Bradbury was also outraged at the persecution of artists by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the House of un-American Activities.

Many writers far better equipped than myself have wrestled writing a treatise for this book, so I'll leave further analysis to them. I just wanted to say that despite the obvious allegory in the story, I think it works just as a simple tale about the importance of books. Books have always been a big presence in my life. From as far back as I can remember, I have always had a full bookcase, jam-packed with titles in my bedroom. I was a voracious reader, blithely leaving books wherever I finished them (invariably not in said bookcase). I grew complacent and took it for granted that I was free to read whatever I chose. It was only as I grew older that I began learning about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, about the Nazi book burnings, and about the scorching and burial of texts and hundreds of Confucian scholars in ancient China. It's sobering stuff and made me think. I know of no country that doesn't have an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism. Generally books are considered deep (though plenty aren't), and there will always be those whom openly distrust (to the point of hostility) those deemed 'highfalutin and clever.' It is entirely plausible that at some stage in the future, books will be banned in any given country. If nothing else Fahrenheit 451 should serve as a warning against authoritarianism, and for a call to keep the free flow of knowledge and art alive. When I cast a roving eye on the pile of books next to me, I am full of appreciation and awe. I will protect them from any fire.

186 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

T. Gow

Bradbury's on Fire with Fahrenheit 451

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2017

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I read the first four or five pages four or five times. Once I got myself into "dystopian" mode, then I was flying. Frankly, this book blew me away. Published in 1953, the future Bradbury imagined has well and truly arrived. I'm not talking about "robo dog" and book burning in a literal sense, but the mind numbing effect of social media, the empty diet of visual pap and meaningless tripe so many of us call "entertainment" So many scenes in this book stand out; slap you hard in the face for being willfully ignorant about important issues; for being politically apathetic. Let's hope that we will be spared the cataclysmic ending Bradbury envisioned. The writing is efficient rather than lyrical, but the intellectual content is astounding. Would recommend.

67 people found this helpful

Boingboing

A flickering ember rather than a raging inferno.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2018

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Fahrenheit 451 is a book I would probably have said I'd read if you'd asked me. I could probably have told you the basic premise: a dystopian land where books are banned and 'Firemen' don't put out fires any more. I might well have read it and - rather counter to the spirit of the book - then pretty much forgotten it. And that's kind of sad because this book is one that most readers know about, a book that challenges the things we love, and yet it's also not really all that great. I hate to say it but it's a little bit forgettable.

It's a short novel and a quick read and it lights the flicker of a flame of thinking about the power of books but it's all just so rushed, so fast to develop and accelerate, that a lot of the opportunities to explore deeper are missed. Montag the fireman - one of the elite who set fire to books, burn people's houses to punish them for the knowledge in their books - witnesses an old lady start a fire and kill herself because she can't be without her books, and meets a young girl who tells him there's so much more to books then just fuel for his fires. He takes a book and becomes part of the anti-establishment.

In the foreword to the book, Ray Bradbury tells us he spent less than 10 dollars hiring the use of a typewriter to write Fahrenheit 451. Sadly sometimes it shows. This is just the bare bones of a story, lacking the meat to flesh it out into something more satisfying, more horrifying. It was written in the 1950s with the Nazi book burnings still fresh in people's minds but long before the wall-to-wall round the clock interactive television experiences that Bradbury envisions. For its time it must have been revolutionary. Today it just looks a bit tired and much too rushed.

21 people found this helpful

Percy Prune

Burning Creativity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2018

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This is another worryingly prescient book written in the middle of the last century. A dystopian nightmare that is becoming all too real.

As is explained in the book, Farenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns. Society has "developed" to the point where people are immersed in a world created by gigantic video screens, tiny radios in their ears and drugs. Books are illegal and must be burned because the ideas inside COULD make some people unhappy. (Sound familiar?)

This is the story of one of the book-burners, (ironically called firemen due to all modern houses being fireproof) who realises the fundamental wrong he's helping to commit, waking up and doing something about it.

The first half of the book is pacy and well constructed, you follow Montag through his growing awareness of the emptiness he's feeling. The second half follows what he does about it.

This was written in the McCarthy era of the 1950's but it stands up extremely well today. Sadly, a lot of the things in the book proved prophetic, fortunately though, not all!

8 people found this helpful

leonie

Book review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2018

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This has been on my TBR for a longgg time and it's only a short book so I don't know why I've waited this long!  Title: Fahrenheit 451  Author: Ray Bradbury Publication Date: October 1953 Page Count: 243 Pages Rating: 3.5* Quote: ‘Books are only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what book says. How they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.’ Cover:  Summary  In an unknown year far into the future (or at least from the date this novel was written) Guy Montag is a fireman. Except not the kind of fireman we all know. Instead of putting out fires, firemen in this time start the fires, burning books which are completely banned from society. Guy loves his job and feels that Burning books is exactly the right thing to do, until he meets a young woman name Clarisse who starts to give him ideas about what else there might be in the world, changes his thinking and makes him consider the question 'why?' What this results in is a turn of events for Guy, he begins to doubt his wife's 'parlour family' who live inside the virtual reality walls of his living room. Makes him doubt that books are really bad and that is normal for war to break out and be over in a matter of hours. Why is the world like this? And is there anything Guy can do to change it? Put it right?  Review  The risk with reading dystopia which was written 7 decades ago is that it won't have stood the test of time. This is not the case with Fahrenheit 451. Instead this novel continues to teach valuable lessons; not least the importance of books and reading. But also friendship, relationships and to be honest it's scary how accurate Bradbury was in his predictions of technology and VR taking over real connections and relationships. Thought provoking and in parts terrifying a perfect read for any fan of dystopia. 

7 people found this helpful

jas

An absolute cracker of a story.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2019

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In a future where information is fed by wall-to-wall TV and books are seen as subversive, Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to start fires rather than put them out; fires specifically intended on burning the homes of anyone found to be in possession of books. And Montag seems content enough, until he meets a young girl called Clarisse, who has moved into his neighbourhood. Brought up controversially by family that appear to shun modern ways, Clarisse has a way about her that causes Montag to start to challenge so many of the things he’d previously accepted. With his curiosity awakened he finds an interest in the very things he’s paid to destroy.

Hang onto your hats and prepare for the ride of your lives. Written in a fast, urgent style I found myself propelled into Montag’s world at a breakneck pace. It’s astonishing how fast his life changes, and you need to run to keep up. Given that this book was written in 1953 it has turned out to be astonishingly prescient and so many references within it resonate with life in the twenty-first century.

The characters are bought to life with well-written dialogue that gives everyone a distinct voice. And despite the futuristic setting, the picture of life in an unfamiliar world is so well crafted that at times it’s difficult to remember it’s not the way life really is. Though when you do, you can’t help but be grateful.

5 people found this helpful

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