“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
This is a 1953 dystopian novel that is set in future America, where books are banned and firemen burn them instead of putting off fires.
In this society people have wall-sized TV screens; with the totalitarian state promotes mindless, nonstop, and rapid-fire entertainment and media saturation that distract people away from having deep thoughts, to keep the populace compliant, and to make them superficially happy.
The story is told through the vantage point of Guy Montag, a fireman who loves his job a bit too much as a person who gets to burn books. That is, until he meets Clarisse McClellan, his 17-year-old new neighbour who is so full of thoughts and observations. During their first conversation she already makes him see things from different angles, and before they part ways she ended the conversation by asking a simple question “are you happy?”, which caught him off guard and unsettles him due to the numbness of life.
As the narration goes, “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.” And that one short conversation completely changed his perspectives, as he now realized that no, he is not happy. His existential dread worsens when he returns home only to find his wife stretched on the bed, glued to her TV and nearly died of an overdose of sleeping pills (but barely remembers it).
But his turning point is not in the few more conversations with Clarice in the span of 1 week (before she mysteriously disappeared); but it is when Montag witnesses an old woman that chooses to burn herself alive with her books during one of the firemen’s raids, which baffles him why such an intellect person would rather die with her collection of knowledge. As he commented, “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”
Curious, he then steals a book – the Bible – from the old woman’s house before it burns down.
Afterward, Montag felt ill after the burning of the old woman and stayed absent from work, where he senses that something is missing in his heart but cannot figure out what. One day his boss, Captain Beatty, visits him at his house and explains why books are banned: their society is all about comfort, speed, and equality, while books brought debate, conflicting ideas, and unhappiness. Beatty then warns Montag about the danger of keeping books.
But Montag has already been curious about books, and has secretly stolen them from the stashes that he’s supposed to burn, accumulating about 20 hidden books behind an air-conditioning vent in his home. And when the burning of the old woman occurred it ignited an existential crisis in him, where Montag then seek out Faber, a retired English professor that he previously met at random in the park.
Faber initially reluctant to speak with Montag, thinking that it was a trap, but eventually explains the importance of books to him and shows him the joy of reading a book, the details that we can learn from, the quality of information, the leisure to digest it, and the right to carry on actions based on what we’ve learned. Before long, both men frequently spoke with each other through a communication device similar like a walkie talkie but in an earbud shape.
But one day an alarm rings down the fire station and Montag and his fellow firemen drive to the address, only to find that it is Montag’s own home. His wife – who is unable to tolerate Montag’s obsession with books – betrayed him and reported him. Captain Beatty then forces Montag to burn his own house. But in a bizarre escalation, Montag kills Captain Beatty with a flamethrower and flees into the night, chased by a mechanical hound programmed to track and kill.
Montag escapes the city by swimming down a river and followed an old train track into the countryside. And he subsequently meets a band of exiled intellectuals, who called themselves “The Book Covers.” Each of them has memorized a book so that it can be passed on when future generations are ready for books again: Plato’s Republic, Marcus Aurelius, Gulliver’s Travel. Also works by Charles Darwin, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Aristophanes, Mahatma Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln. Also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Montag is subsequently assigned to memorize parts of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
A war soon breaks out and the city was obliterated by bombers in a matter of seconds. It was not a sudden occurrence, however, but nobody knows what the war is about, and they even ignored the sound of jet fighters flying through the city every now and then. This is a testament to people’s utter ignorance on the current affairs and the real world in general, as they were all busy being consumed by distractions.
These band of exiles, who has witnessed the attack from outside the city, survived. And they return towards the ruins and set out to rebuild society from the ashes by restoring the preserved knowledge of human history.
The book has themes that should be alarming 70+ years later today, where censorship is not only driven by the government but also by public apathy on books. Instead, technology and mass media are more commonly used as tools of distraction. It is also a moral story about conformity vs individual thought, where the society described in this book looks eerily similar like the real world today.
