About the Book

Fahrenheit

451

From the Book Jacket

Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future when the written word is forbidden. Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to burn any books that are discovered along with the houses in which they were hidden. Montag enjoys his job and never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce until he meets a young girl who tells him of a past where people didn't't live in fear and the written word was legal.

Montag secretly begins stealing books before they are destroyed. He meets a professor who agrees to educate him. Montag's pilfering doesn't go unnoticed, and soon he finds himself running for his life!

Published in 1953 during the Cold War and McCarthy Eras, the novel reflects Bradbury’s concerns about censorship and conformity during a period when free expression of ideas could lead to social and economic ostracization. 

The book expands the concept of a short story that Bradbury wrote in 1947 under the titled “Bright Phoenix,” which was published in a revised form in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963.  Galaxy Science Fiction published an expanded version of the premise titled "The Fireman" in 1951.  A serialized version of Fahrenheit 451appeared in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy Magazine.  Fahrenheit 451 is twice as long as "The Fireman."  Book burning and the memorization of text for preservation are the central actions of all three versions of the story.   

More relevant than ever a half-century later, Fahrenheit 451 has achieved the rare distinction of being both a literary classic and a perennial best seller.  While viewed as a science fiction work, Fahrenheit 451 has led to mainstream critical acclaim for Bradbury’s ability as a prose stylist and as a writer of ideas. The novel is often compared to other dystopian fiction—works which create societies where people lead dehumanized and often dangerous lives—such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984.  Bradbury had been praised for the richness of his imagery in Fahrenheit 451.  The thematic elements of the novel have earned it the reputation as a book of social criticism which focuses particularly on American consumerism and cultural decline.   

Plot Synopsis: WARNING Contains Spoilers…

BE CAREFUL so you don’t get BURNED!!!

Guy Montag is a fireman who burns books in a futuristic American city.  In Montag’s world, firemen start fires rather than putting them out.  The people in this society do not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think independently, or have meaningful conversations.  Instead, they drive very fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen to the radio on “Seashell Radio” sets attached to their ears.  Montag encounters a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocently penetrating questions and her unusual love of people and nature.  Over the next few days, Montag experiences a series of disturbing events.  First, his wife, Mildred, attempts suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills.  Then, when he responds to an alarm that an old woman has a stash of hidden literature, the woman shocks him by choosing to be burned alive along with her books.  A few days later, he hears that Clarisse has been killed by a speeding car.  Montag’s dissatisfaction with his life increases, and he begins to search for a solution in a stash of books that he has stolen from his own fires and hidden inside an air-conditioning vent.

When Montag fails to show up for work, his fire chief, Beatty, pays a visit to his house.  Beatty explains that it's normal for a firemant to go through a phase of wondering what books have to offer, and he delivers a dizzying monologue explaining how books came to be banned in the first place.  According to Beatty, special-interest groups and other "minorities" objected to books that offended them.  Soon, all books began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody.  This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions.  Beatty tells Montag to take twenty-four hours to see if his stolen books contain anything worthwhile and then turn them in for incineration.  Montag begins a long and frenzied night of reading. 

Overwhelmed by the task of reading, Montag looks to his wife for help and support, but she prefers television to her husband’s company and cannot understand why he would want to take the terrible risk of reading books.  He remembers that he once met a retired English professor named Faber sitting in a park, and he decides that this man might be able to help him understand what he reads.  He visits Faber, who tells him that the value of books lies in the detailed awareness of life that they contain.  Faber says that Montag needs not only books, but also the leisure to read  them and the freedom to act upon their ideas. 

Faber agrees to help Montag with his reading, and they concoct a risky scheme to overthrow the status quo.  Faber will contact a printer and begin reproduction books, and Montag will plant books in the homes of firemen to discredit the profession and to destroy the machinery of censorship.  Faber gives him a two-way radio earpiece (the "green bullet") so that he can hear what Montag hears and talk to him secretly. 

Montag goes home, and soon two of his wife’s friends arrive to watch television.  The women discuss their families and the war that is about to be declared in an extremely frivolous manner.  Their superficiality angers him, and he takes out a book of poetry and reads "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold.  Faber buzzes in his ear for him to be quietly, and Mildred tries to explain that poetry reading is a standard way for firemen to demonstrate the uselessness of literature.  The women are extremely disturbed by the poem and leave to file a complaint against Montag.

Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to Beatty.  Beatty confuses Montag by barraging him with contradictory quotations from great books.  Beatty exploits these contradictions to show that literature is morbid, dangerously complex, and as such, deserves incineration.  Suddenly, the alarm sounds, and they rush off to answer the call, only to find that the alarm is at Montag's own house.  Mildred gets into a cab with her suitcase and Montag realizes that his own wife has betrayed him. 

Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself; when he is done, Beatty places him under arrest.  When Beatty continues to berate Montag, he turns the flamethrower on his superior and proceeds to burn him to ashes.  Montag know s the other firemen unconscious and runs.  The Mechanical Hound, a monstrous machine that Beatty has set to attack Montag, pounces and injects Montag's leg with a large dose of anesthetic.  Montage manages to destroy it with flamethrower, then he walks off the numbness in his leg, and escapes with some books that were hidden in his backyard.  He plants these in another fireman's house and calls in an alarm from a pay phone.   

Montag goes to Faber’s house, where he learns that a new Hound has been put on his trail, along with several helicopters and a television crew.  Faber tells Montag that he is leaving for St. Louis to see a retired printer how may be able to help them.  Montag gives Faber some money and together, they remove Montag's scent from his house so the hound cannot give chase.  Montag then takes some of Faber's old clothes and runs off toward the river.  The who city watches as the chase unfolds on TV, but Montag manages to escape in the river and change into Faber's clothes to further disguise his scent.  He drifts downstream into the country and follows a set of abandoned railroad tracks until he finds a group of renegade intellectuals ("the Book People"), led by a man named Granger, who welcome him.  They are part of a nationwide network of book lovers who have memorized many great works.  They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the aftermath of the war that has just been declared.  Montag's role is to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes.  Enemy jets appear in the sky and completely obliterate the city with bombs.  Montag and his new friends move on to search for survivors and rebuild civilization. 

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