A picture worth 170 pages: A world where people drive too fast, live too fast – too busy moving from one thing to the next. A world where the pedestrian is rare. A world where people are too busy (and prefer) watching television on their walls, or watching races or going to fun parks, to sit down and talk. A world where people constantly have ear buds in their ears. A world where real knowledge has been condensed and packaged into small factoids. A world where unhappiness is over-medicated, where medication is abused, and where suicide attempts are on the rise. A world where a war is being continuously waged…
Sound familiar? Yet another example of the ever so round-about idea of “life imitating art” (the other half of the circle, being “art imitating life”). And one of the reasons Fahrenheit 451 is oft listed on lists enumerating books that have changed the world.
Did you know that in the spring of 1950, Ray Bradbury crafted the first draft of this masterpiece in the basement of the UCLA library – in just 4.5 hours?
For eighty cents?
Complete and total badassery.
The 50th Anniversary of Fahrenheit 451 was celebrated in 2003, just three years before the advent of Twitter (a social media and microblogging tool that allows for communication and the sharing of knowledge through short blasts of 140 characters or less). Interestingly, I found Ray Bradbury on Twitter! I thought for sure that he’d be protesting such a movement, but I’m happy to know that such a thought leading icon as himself has embraced the benefits of social media, even Twitter – the very idea of condensed knowledge made manifest!
The novel opens up with a description of the new dystopian world that humans find themselves living in. A new era where books have been deemed the enemy and are burned. The main character, Guy Montag, finds himself an enforcer of such dictum but is quickly shaken and riveted by three very simple words.
“Are you happy?”
The rest of the novel is Guy Montag’s awakening of sorts and definitely should not be summarized – but read.
A few of my favorite quotes include:
“We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law.”
“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come ’round in their own time…”
“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that. Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
“The air was cold and smelled of a coming rain.” – this last one because it reminds me of his short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, inspired by a fantastic poem of the same name, written by Sarah Teasdale.
Another quote I really like is the one that Bradbury provides on the page just before the novel begins,
“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” – Juan Ramón Jiménez.
***
Pardon me while I digress…
I’m in love with Ray Bradbury. And Margaret Atwood. And Kurt Vonnegut. And a whole slew of others… but also this whole idea of social satire set in futuristic dystopian worlds.
The love affair happened years ago, in high school. It was my first year teaching high school English Lit. and the very first unit was on “The Challenge of Change” and “The Price of Progress” and I was forced to read these authors and teach these universal themes for the very first time.
I’m not sure if it all made a lasting impression on me because I studied it so well so that I could teach it that I ended up loving it, or vice versa; but whichever the egg, I’m a happy chicken for having discovered such beauty!
