Fahrenheit 451: More Relevant Now Than Ever
Fahrenheit 451 is one of the greatest pieces of American literature. Now, in 2008, I can see that America is becoming more like that world Bradbury thought of years ago.
I truly believe that reading is becoming out of date as time goes by; Fahrenheit 451 put that belief into perspective. The deeply allegorical book that was originally published in the 1950’s for Playboy Magazine was set in the time frame of the early 1990’s. This classic novel presents us with a world where people have chosen to give up reading, lives of substance, and peace for a world of hedonism, high minimum speed limits, and illiteracy. As I read this incredible book I was almost crying at the end because it was just so good. It made me think, reflect, and realize that literature is the most important part of a meaningful, scholarly, and thoughtful society. This behemoth dystopian masterpiece taught me the power of books and reflective thought, just as Ray Bradbury intended it to teach.
Understandably, Bradbury could not have known what a great book he was writing at the time. The purpose of this book was to teach people to leave the television and the families’ people had created on the screens and go back to reading classic literature. As he says “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them”. He also said that television is a thoughtless activity and as every one of those quarter second clips goes by on the screen we forget to think, all the fast pictures going by makes us think we’re thinking. Books are not the opposite of televisions as they do not teach us how to think, but they are the catalyst for individually developing our minds in a good way. The main character Guy Montag brings up a story from his youth about how his older roguish cousin paid him to fill a sieve with sand at the beach. He continually tries and tries to fill it up, but the sand always sifts through. This is how books work with our minds, they never stick around for too long, but you have to keep trying because putting something worthwhile into your brain continuously is better than nothing at all. If no one ever put any literature, books, or truth into their minds, the world would turn into an awful place.
My version of what the word dystopian means is that the world has come out the opposite of what we wanted it to be like. I know that’s kind of a crude description, but I’ve grown a love of dystopian style art. Movies like Idiocracy, Pleasantville, and Brazil show artist renderings of what they think the world will be like as we continue on our current course of action. Books like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World have much in common with the movies I mentioned earlier, but the one central idea that all anti-utopian media outlets possess is that mankind has become a wasteland of human thought.
The big difference that gives Fahrenheit 451 the edge over all the others of its genre is that it gives a logical and feasible reason to the breakdown of the mind, the choice to quit reading. Is today the same as Bradbury’s depiction of the future? No, we aren’t even close, colleges are still teaching liberal arts to young minds, English classes can still give reading assignments, and bookstores are still legal. Are we heading down the same path as the book? My unfortunate instinctual answer is yes, websites like Wikipedia, Sparknotes and Cliffnotes.com are shortening books so that whole works of literature can be read in under an hour. Movies like The Bourne Ultimatum, Moulin Rouge, and Sin City give us no time to stop and think about what’s going on while we watch them. And I’ve heard too many of my friends say they only read when they have to.
To conclude, reading is a blessing of the people that writers give to us. Although our fast-paced lifestyle is fun and a part of our culture, I think that we need to begin reading more to add texture to our lives. As Professor Faber says “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality.” And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.” (Faber, 83) If we could add texture to our lives and still appreciate roller coasters, violent video games, and high-speed action movies, I think the world would be a better place. That would define the paradise of having your cake and eating it too.
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This hits some very broad nails square on the head. Today the readership of books has declined so far so fast that I have heard moans and groans about reading 13 pages of a book a night for an English class.
The quality of writing has fallen with the invention of the internet. Logical Fallacies, such as Ad hominem and hasty generalization, are made quite frequently on the internet unknown to the user.
Now I am using what I have personally seen in High school English classes, but show me a High schooler that has read Mutual Aid, History of the Peloponnesian War,and Being and Nothingness. It is exactly what Bradbury was talking about these great books go unread.
Today’s is a scattergun experience: I find many Western young people have a wide exposure to the world but no depth. They often have no concept of the meaning and implication of many concepts, even words and images fail to resonate with them.
What do you understand by “freedom”, “scientific method”? What does a picture of the destruction of Hiroshima mean to you?
If still waters run deep, it appears that the opposite is also true: rapid flowing waters run in the shallows – where the inner life remains superficial.
moderate,
you have obviously not been to any american schools recently. trust me, i just graduated from one. i was voted “most unique” because i read books for fun.
O.K.- the comment by Priscilla makes me want to cry……….
We are Devo……….
> That would define the paradise of having your cake and eating it too.
THE CAKE IS A LIE.
I wasn’t voted most unique in high school, but everyone did think it was weird when I read stuff that wasn’t for school and when I did read for school I actually read it and knew what i was talking about. Everyone else watched the movie for Grapes of Wrath, watched Apocolypse Now for Heart of Darkness, and read the sparknotes for everything else.
One time in my higher level English class Junior Year my teacher read out a discusting sentance from one of her younger students in another class. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it went along the lines of X and Y because X and Y. Not those letters, but they said one thing, because, then they said the same thing to back it up.
Was moderate talking to me? I couldn’t tell. If she was, I didn’t mean that people can’t read I meant that they’re choosing not to read like in fahrenheit 451. And stop talking yourself so seriously, I’m not a liberal and don’t call me one if you call yourself moderate. Conservatives in this country are calling themselves moderates the same way the liberals used to when the Democrats realized they were losing public support during the Reagan Administration.
1) Turn on and use your spell check. Normally that is regarded as a lame criticism, but, in this case, you are talking literacy, reading and writing.
2) Barack is mostly liberal, McCain maybe a bit conservative, but both can read and write – political leanings have little to do with the subject.
3) Set good example, read to your (or others) children, often, even that which you or they may not like. That is where it begins, for most.
i’m sorry for my previous comment. I have a slight temper when it comes to people defining me in a derogatory way. Politics really shouldn’t get into this discussion. Thank you Carmac.
I think you are right on the money. Not just because we are such a digital/visual age but the apparent decline in rational thought. People are very willing to accept the images they see, as well as what our government, tell us as truth. Nothing wrong with a little healthy doubt.
And it’s not being “a nervous liberal”.
First off let me say that Fahrenheit 451 has got to be one of the most ironic conversions from book to movie.
Second: Although the reading of books has probably declined in the last couple decades; I would argue that the desire and thirst for knowledge has increased dramatically. The internet has become a forum that allows a large percentage of the world to put forth their personal views whether they are valid and factual or not. Most people my age I would say take almost nothing for face value and distrust almost everything that government tells us. You can even look at the current election data and see that the young populous is showing interest and participating in record numbers.
I think it is crass to assert that “young” people do not have as strong of views or are not as capable of critical thinking to the level of someone who maybe in their thirties for example. That is a good thing. Just because something is in a book does not make it true to the same extent that just because something is electronically composed does not make it nonfactual. Teenagers and twenties aged people are quite discerning with their views. You have to be if you want to be taken seriously because access to information is readily available and on your person at all times if you have a laptop or internet capable phone.
since someone asked here is what I think:
Freedom:
1)Is the institution that allows people to make small to large decisions in their life based upon past experience that will net them what they believe to be the best possible outcome. The only stipulation to this is that your personal freedom may not infringe upon another’s.
2)Freedom is you’re ability to do what you love
Scientific method:
1) A strategic way of search for a solution thats main focus is to obtain facts and disconnect the person performing the experiment.
I do not mean to come off as angry, but its becoming an increasingly common cliche to blame things on the younger population, hey watch out! They’re skateboarding on the sidewalk again!
Please, enough of this insisting that society has somehow degraded. I graduated HS 25 years ago and was one of–at best–only a handful who read for enjoyment. This was before the internet and even before cable was widespread (at least in our town). There’s a little bit of Fahrenheit 451 in every generation and, apparently, a little bit of good-ole-days nostalgia in both conservatives *and* liberals.
To condemn “high speed” movies is to condemn the Futurist art movement of the 1910s/20s and the Marx Brothers who represented its common-man counterpart. To condemn “Wikipedia,” et al. is to condemn any summarization of knowledge and therefore expedited awareness for a wider crowd. Do I want to study post-Czarist Russian literature? A well-compiled Cliff Notes will introduce me to the subject matter and suggest larger starting-points to dive in.
Can kinetic art movements turn into extreme cinema? And can knowledge indexes be used as an end rather than a means? Certainly. But let’s not abandon a concept based on its most vulgar implementation.
I read for fun and most other people that I know read for fun, but that is only my reality. Everyone keeps on preaching that over time, language degrades to the point that only grunts and other sounds will be acceptable. I do not believe that is the case, I believe that language, reading and writing is in a state of constant evolution, constant flux. You can not state that language is degrading because with that logic you could say that people 2000 years ago were the masters of the universe when it came to language/reading/writing. The internet and movies may be changing the way we use written material in everyday life, but by no means they are degrading it or erasing it. I mean, I am reading your article on the internet, no?
I have never thought it it like that.
thank you for opening my eyes to the stupidity of People.
you have changed my life for ever.
I love America
Ok now that i made my self a idiot. I would like to make up for it maybe a little. Every one that has comment on this piece obivously is smart or at least reads. I know many people who dont read or write for fun. Were voted biggest drunk in highschool and are big drunks now. This drunks amaze me when they dont know basic things and they way they talk is pretty much grunts and spitting. So i agree with this essay that society is degrading its self and becoming stupid.
sorry for any grammer and spelling errors.
It’s not so much that TV is worse for your mind than a book. It’s just that the average quality of content provided is much higher in literature. A great documentary, or that rare ingenious fictional TV show can be every bit as significant and a work of thought provoking art as a good book.
Now obviously if you’re comparing the daily news, your average sitcom,talk show, soap or the vast majority of TV against the millions of brilliant world changing books out there, obviously TV is going to look absolutely mind numbing in comparison. That’s because TV is mostly being written for idiots.
I’m a med student and people always ask me how I have time to read for pleasure. We all make time for the things that are important to us: drunks for drinking and readers for reading. Sometimes I do wonder if there are meetings for people like me.
Good modern literature is very hard to find nowadays. I love reading, and I do go to the library often. However, after a few pages, I put the book down and forget about it. So, I’ve decided to become a writer, and I am working on my first novel!
I also love television, but I watch it on the internet. With no commercials, I zip right through anything I want to see. While watching these shows, I write, play with my rats, sometimes eat dinner, but I still have free time to exercise, clean, and work. AND, I have time to read, if I find something worth reading.
I have no regrets. Television shows are meant for entertainment, just like performing arts, movies, music, and books.
Very good observations here. I have to agree with you. I know in the book it talks a lot about wall sets and the family. It is creepy how close to that we are now with a big flat screen TV’s. People place TV’s over their fire places now where there used to be family photos. Crazy!
Yeah and the Tv’s just keep getting bigger and bigger. Ray Bradbury actually bought a huge one for his house just to be ironic and show he was right I guess.
i feel exactly the same way.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned or not but…well, people are reading more than at any point in the history of the world. Lets be honest here. The quality of our ideas isn’t dropping. The number of those who can present their ideas is just increasing with the advent of mass communication. The number of educated or intellectually capable people is higher today than it has ever been! Now, let me qualify that statement because I know it’ll raise a number of eye-brows.
If we’re speaking of ‘per capita’ books read then, heck…things have changed a lot from just a few hundred years ago. Why, just six hundred years ago most people only saw books in the halls of churches since the copying process of a book was laborious and had to be done by hand. They didn’t even own the holy books of their own religions.
Then Gutenberg, the Great Printer, who could place copies of the Bible in the hands of men and women everywhere! Of course, this didn’t mean the vast majority of people actually read them but they attained a peripheral knowledge of what was there. The information flowed out through society, spread and tempered by human perspectives, re-asserted by the original texts and modified to suit different ideals and situations until it has /truly/ become one of the most survive-able sets of ideas in history. The Qu’ran has had much the same metamorphosis, spilling out across the ranks of civilization as the information is closer at hand, more easily accessed.
Still, it took great investment of time to learn to pen books. Writing them, selling them, distributing them…it all took a great deal of finance. The vast majority of persons with only a limited knowledge or desire to know ignored them except when they contained information necessary to their futures and even fewer actually took the time to write them. It was a great advancement though! Fantastic that people could now have all this information so close at hand. Why, one book could plan a farmer’s entire crop cycle where it had previously taken one farmer many years to learn the arts from his father. He could even go so far as to /change professions/ by reading these books rather than spend years in apprenticeship. Stunning!
Radio and Television came next. People could learn to bake a cake on the radio, learn things from halfway around the world, hear music they never thought possible. Their evolution accelerated and they could hear about new and exciting places to visit, new products to make life easier where years before they’d have had only a system of books which they could check out once in a while and which required the active and complete participation of their minds to extract information from. Television came next, including both the visual and the auditory. Now learning could be done passively and on masses of subjects. Books, as a format, were slow and ponderous. Competition dictated they be phased out in favor of the new information distribution system which was much faster and more effective at conveying ideas without the need for repetition.
Television will hopefully have a much shorter lifespan than the internet. The Internet is the new format. It includes the capacity for aural, visual, and intellectual interaction whereas radio, books, and television are primarily passive formats. Most people will only use it for those things which pertain directly to them as it has always been. Evolution has a great many failures and that is why it moves forward. It tries many different things. So you see, it is not that we are losing anything. On the contrary, I believe books will be around for quite some time and the need to learn to read will be more important than ever.
Information and language are thoroughly intertwined and changing all the time. Language is transmitted through the writing of subjective material. The average human through interaction with vast numbers of ideas may find themselves drawn to seek depth in only a few.
That people have a shallow grasp of many hundreds of things and a deep grasp of only a few is a /distinct/ improvement over a hundred years ago when people could, at best, have a deep grasp of only one or two things and lived their lives without knowing how shallow they really were.
Be careful before you condemn your new evolution to tacit failure. Watch closely and read history. We are in the brightest of days and our minds are still growing.
Sadly, the author has missed some of Bradbury’s points. He never says that the things that are in literature couldn’t be in the parlors he creates for Fahrenheit 451.
Sadly, the thing in his dystopian future, where the time it takes place is never actually mentioned, is that there was not government edict doing this, the people themselves wanted to be stupid and uneducated.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; I would rather use one hundred words, and create an infinite number of pictures in the minds of my readers.
The primary purpose of humanity is to create, be it buildings, babies, books or what-have-you. Everything begins as an idea inside someone’s head, and through creative and physical endeavour, becomes reality. Imagination is the engine of creative thought, and the more mental detail one can give to a creation that exists only in the mind’s eye, the more powerful the creation and the greater impact the creation has once it reaches reality.
Like any skill, imagination works only when it is kept well exercised. However, the more we are exposed to visual representations of an alternate reality, and the more “real” that alternate reality is portrayed, the less our imagination is asked to ‘fill in the gaps’ to achieve a believable immersion in that reality. The easier it becomes to ‘believe’ what we are seeing on the screen — be it TV, movies, or computer games — the more our imagination becomes stunted and inflexible. We lose the ability to craft that important fine detail on the images within our minds.
Boredom is the hallmark of a dead or dying imagination … and without imagination, we lose the ability to create. Once we cannot create, we cease to be human. I firmly believe that we have to create regularly — prose, visual arts, dancing, programming, whatever — or we go mad.
I read at least one novel per week. I estimate I watch a grand total of six hours of TV/movies per year. I rarely play computer games, and the less eye candy they have, the more I like them — interactive text adventures like the original Infocom titles are, for me, the high art of gaming.
And you know what? I’m never bored. If I’m not reading, I’ll be off visiting like-minded people, or building something, or making music, or writing something of my own purely for the sake of writing. I like being domestic, I like being a social butterfly, I like solitude and the stillness that comes with meditation.
Television tells us what to think and how to think. People who watch television (or any other form of visual entertainment with a high degree of realism) regularly, lose the ability to think — I mean *really* think — for themselves, and end up spending too much of their time living inside other people’s heads instead of their own.
Be who you are and say what you feel, those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind
You know what, I prefer reading books than watching movies. You see, we all have creative imagination — what is perceived by one person maybe different from another — a whole creatively different. I enjoy much using my imagination as the “big screen”.
Nice article
Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t read this yet. Really great article man. I look forward to more in the future.
Thanks guys.
I have got to think of another article as good as this one.
I’m so proud of you Caleb.
haha. I meant to have bad grammar back there. I like being ironic.
haha
Thank man…
Write another one!
yeah!
I’m definitely going to read it!
Very well written.
let’s get married
I hated this book with a passion when I tried to read it at 11 or 12 years old. As a young man of 18 I realized the brilliance of Bradbury’s work. How sad is it that at 35, I am shouting into the electronic void that this is the greatest American novel of the 20th century.
Instead of burning books we now have anti-paper lunatics clamoring for the end of all print media. Technology has eroded our capacity to feel, to remember and to cherish. Bradbury probably never imagined he’d live to see our world grow so hollow.
But I remain hopeful that the pendulum will inevitably swing back to thoughtfulness and wonder.
David,
Glad to hear you came around to how good this book is. I loved it even more after I finished it because you see the world in a different perspective, like how our world is so very similar to what he imagined it would be like. Dystopian forms of entertainment tend to do that.
On the topic of technology, irony, and a little tid bit of info some may not know. Ray Bradbury actually bought a wall sized TV, exactly like the ones in the book…
Caleb Nico