Fahrenheit 451: Eerily Prophetic
I just now got around to reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451--this despite having taken a 300-level science fiction course as an undergraduate. While no one today, at least to my knowledge, is burning books en masse (other than maybe the Chinese--add a comment if that sounds off to you), Bradbury accurately forecasted the crappy cultural evolution, fueled by sex, drugs and mindless entertainment, in which ubiquitous advertising assaults us all day from every angle and where inane and brain-deadening television programming captures conscience, rendering the masses semi-comatose.
One passage that particularly caught my attention involved the pep talk Captain Beatty gives the protagonist Guy Montag, after Beatty suspects Montag (a firefighter assigned to burning all books and the homes in which they're found) of essentially falling off the anti-bookwagon, if you will. "We must all be alike," Bradbury has Beatty proclaim. "Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it."
What a powerful passage. If you think about it, we are not born equal. Many struggle at studies that come easy to others; some are athletically gifted, others not; many fail where others succeed. Learning, though, and education close the gap.
Scarcely a page later Bradbury strikes another insight. Recalling the young lady--Clarisse McClellan--next door who Montag found insightful and intriguing (with her probing, scintillating questions), Beatty has a ready answer. "The girl? She was a time bomb...She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why? That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead."
Thus, Bradbury warns against letting government and society advance to the point that no one reads, no one asks questions, no one explores truths, no one challenges censorship. That's particularly intriguing, considering Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 when McCarthy scare tactics were running high. The U.S. Army had been "bullied" into removing some "tainted" books from shelves overseas, according to Bradbury.
In fact, Bradbury experienced difficulty finding a publisher. A startup and renegade Chicago entrepreneur went out on a limb and took a chance, running Bradbury's work in the second, third and fourth installments of his new magazine. The publisher? Hugh Hefner. The magazine? You know it: Playboy.
Books are a critical tool in the education process. I'm happy to have actually read five novels, now, while the company's closed for the Christmas break. So read. Read often. And then read some more. You can even say you're reading for the articles, and you'll be telling the truth.
One passage that particularly caught my attention involved the pep talk Captain Beatty gives the protagonist Guy Montag, after Beatty suspects Montag (a firefighter assigned to burning all books and the homes in which they're found) of essentially falling off the anti-bookwagon, if you will. "We must all be alike," Bradbury has Beatty proclaim. "Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it."
What a powerful passage. If you think about it, we are not born equal. Many struggle at studies that come easy to others; some are athletically gifted, others not; many fail where others succeed. Learning, though, and education close the gap.
Scarcely a page later Bradbury strikes another insight. Recalling the young lady--Clarisse McClellan--next door who Montag found insightful and intriguing (with her probing, scintillating questions), Beatty has a ready answer. "The girl? She was a time bomb...She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why? That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead."
Thus, Bradbury warns against letting government and society advance to the point that no one reads, no one asks questions, no one explores truths, no one challenges censorship. That's particularly intriguing, considering Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 when McCarthy scare tactics were running high. The U.S. Army had been "bullied" into removing some "tainted" books from shelves overseas, according to Bradbury.
In fact, Bradbury experienced difficulty finding a publisher. A startup and renegade Chicago entrepreneur went out on a limb and took a chance, running Bradbury's work in the second, third and fourth installments of his new magazine. The publisher? Hugh Hefner. The magazine? You know it: Playboy.
Books are a critical tool in the education process. I'm happy to have actually read five novels, now, while the company's closed for the Christmas break. So read. Read often. And then read some more. You can even say you're reading for the articles, and you'll be telling the truth.
posted by Erik Eckel at 9:01 PM
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