My favorite books: Fahrenheit 451

If you are from the USA, there is a good chance that this book was basically forced on you in high school. I had been told by people that went to school a decade or so before me that something by Ray Bradbury was included in almost all high school curriculums but by the time I was there they had moved it over the Dandelion Wine instead of a titular book that is a reflection of society that unfortunately reflects so much of what is actually going on in the world, and especially the United States right now.

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The book tells the story of a dystopian future where the government is extremely authoritarian and behaves as though the population must be controlled in every aspect of their lives. They are not even allowed access to certain unauthorized information and the title comes from a specific temperature that things will burn at. For all you non Americans out there the other title, which doesn't exist, would be Celsius 233 but they never did that because a book's title is a book's title.

The main character of Guy Montag is a fireman but in the time period he lives in the job of a fireman is not to put out fires, it is to start them. He and his team of militant government types are charged with the burning of anything that the government doesn't approve of and this is primarily books and art that has been determined to be detrimental to the peace.

Bradbury's inspiration for writing the book comes from anti-Soviet times in the United States where even though I was not alive people would regularly be accused of being Communist and they would have their belonging searched and seized as well as occasionally destroyed. It was up to the person to prove their innocence in these situations and just like as appears in F-451, often the government wasn't interested in determining if you were actually guilty, they WANTED you to be guilty and many innocent people were put in prison or had their lives turned upside down because of the nationalistic panic and over-reaction.

As a fireman, Guy Montag has a crisis of conscious because he starts to slowly realize that what he is doing is wrong and doesn't actually benefit society. In fact, it has the opposite effect and it was never intended to benefit society, it was merely intended to keep the people who are in power, consistently in power. A populace that cannot think for themselves cannot make and uprising let alone overthrow those that are their masters. By eliminating all records that do not agree with the current administration or by rewriting history to suit the narrative of those in power, the people in power can create a compliant populace who have been broken and become docile and compliant.

Montag is the protagonist in the book and he experiences that even the people closest to him, especially his wife, have been completely brainwashed by the system and are ready to see him burn along with the books he has collected and even himself in the process if need be. To me this is a reflection of the modern-day political world and how easily the public can be manipulated if they allow themselves to be. One only need look at the Covid reaction and how the government was attempting and in many cases succeeding in getting the public to turn in their neighbors, friends, and even family for violation of the codes that the government had just made up recently in the interests of "public safety."

This book is a lesson in the dangers of groupthink and the individual being denied any information that the masters do not agree with. This also happened a great deal during Covid because anyone who dissented against the government-dictated narrative saw themselves ostracized, had their careers ruined, had them receiving massive fines, and sometimes even being thrown in jail. F-451 is supposed to be a work of fiction and perhaps a warning of what can happen to a population if they don't develop the ability to think critically. If we are ever denied access to any piece of literature or information, we should actually be more, not less interested in what that information actually is.

Fahrenheit 451 is a very important piece of literature and it also manages to teach us something through allegory and by showing us in entertaining ways what the book is trying to say, without seeming too much like a boring college lecture.

I highly recommend that anyone out there that is a bit confused by the decisions that the governments of the world are making to read this book because it and many other books that were written many years ago seem to be coming true right in front of our eyes.