Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury wrote of the great pieces of literature of our time titled Fahrenheit 451. The book is a dystopian novel and I was immediately drawn into it when I read the book in high school. I reread the book and I still felt compelled by each page, the beginning alone is captivating and it gets better as it progresses. Bradbury effectively warns of the pitfalls and dangers of banning books from a society, in the book there is a made up society where books are outlawed and burned. Anyone found with a book becomes guilty of a crime and is punished. I can't imagine such a society where the lack of individual liberties and punishments are abundant. A world without books would be a world without life. For example, books, as pointed out in the book, are essentially to learning and growing for human societies. Without books, people would become illiterate and miss out on information that is important to their livelihood. A world without books would revert back to the time in history where the majority of the population was illiterate (before the Gutenberg printing press). The main character in Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, serves as a visionary of sorts and a rebel against this restricting society. He runs off with a group of like minded people that believe that books are of great importance. The society in which the book is based is in the future, much like other books we have read thus far (Planet of the Apes, 1984, etc.) and it's a society in which critical thought is manipulated and extradited in an attempt to make the society "equal" in terms of knowledge. I believe that without books there would still be inequalities (as there were before Gutenberg) and that a lack of critical thought would be detrimental to progress because those with great ideas would not be heard. A society without books would seize to function because expression would be outlawed and that would leave the society vulnerable to greed and being taken advantage of. Bradbury's social commentary makes for a great read because it makes you think of how censorship can be harmful to a society and how it can reverse progressive thinking. I found it interesting that the professor mentioned that Fahrenheit 451 had been banned in certain places, it's ironic that a book that criticizes censorship ends up being censored. Not only is it ironic, but it proves Bradbury's point that a society without books devalues itself of expression and critical thought.