I don't have a lot to say in a review/commentary of Fahrenheit 451. I particularly don't have anything intelligent to say along the lines of literary analysis. For me, the interesting thing about the book is the rough sketch it gives of a world with no books and thus no libraries.
Actually, interesting
is the wrong word. It's more like terrifying,
especially since so many of the elements of that world exist in this one. People not reading, not filtering information, not paying attention to other people, teenagers becoming more and more violent, government starting and winning wars simply because it can. However absurd and ridiculous that world may be on paper, we are living in it now. It is ours.
Luckily, I have two reasons for hope. One is Bradbury's, voiced by a character named Granger, a reminder of the phoenix' power of regeneration:
There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation.
Our society may blow itself up with corruption and selfishness, but there are always a few, a steadily-growing minority, who remember and are determined to do it better next time. Eventually we'll stop making the same mistakes.
My other hope stems from libraries and library systems like KCLS, both because they exist and because people use them. Bradbury's firemen burn books, but they are not the censors. Society first censored itself, cutting away objectionable passages, avoiding challenges, ceasing to read or look beyond the known and familiar. Not here! As long as librarians still staff the desks and stock the shelves, libraries must and will remain the bastions of free speech and exchange of information, even if it is neither easy nor welcome. If patrons stop coming to the library, we must bring the library to them, for their life and health as well as that of our society and our democracy.
Stephen says:
Have you read the coda Bradbury added to the book in the late seventies? Turns out the book itself was censored over the years by the publisher before Bradbury found out and had it reinstated in full (This was back in the 70's, so recent copies should be ok).
I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Bradbury a few years back. Fascinating man.
Laurabelle says:
Yeah, I read that, about all the damns gradually getting edited out. The coda also talks about his getting letters from various people saying that he should add stronger female roles to it or that it's racist or whatever—exactly the kind of censorship-by-minority that he describes in the book. Scary, really.
I envy your having attended a talk by him. It must indeed have been riveting.