Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

Magill Book Review: Guy Montag, a fireman whose job it is to burn books, begins to doubt his society's high-speed, hedonistic way of life when he meets Clarisse McClellan, a young girl whose family lives a slower, more graceful existence. Clarisse shares her values with him until the McClellans mysteriously disappear.As Montag's dissatisfaction increases, he seeks out a retired English professor named Faber for support. However, Montag's chief, Beatty, correctly suspects Montag of being a secret reader and book collector. After Beatty burns down Montag's house, he must flee civilization and, on Faber's advice, find a group of outcasts who have dedicated themselves to memorizing whole books while their society destroys itself in a pointless war. Though the novel focuses on a book burner, it is more than a diatribe against censorship. Rather, it pictures a society, not far removed from our own, in which books and the leisure, thought, and tolerance necessary to enjoy them are no longer valued. The firemen simply enforce the will of a people who desire only conformity, unrelated facts, and immediate gratification. The most frightening aspect of the story is the portrayal of Montag's wife, Mildred, and her friends, who live through electronic entertainment devices. The debasement of the quality of life through the misuses of technology and the neglect of literature is a persistent theme in Bradbury's fiction, but this novel remains his fullest treatment of the subject. The lyric power and symbolic richness of the book make this Bradbury's most satisfactory long fiction and a classic of speculative literature. The title of the novel is derived from the combustion temperature of paper: 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Questions for discussion

1. How do the contrasting personalities of Mildred and Clarisse depict the essential conflict of Montag?

2. What are the contradictions within the character of Captain Beatty? How does he represent the fallacy of censorship?

3. What is the symbolic significance of the sieve and of "Denham's Dentifrice"?

4. How is reading portrayed as a subversive act? How does the solitary experience of reading create a role for an individual within larger society?

5. The novel envisions a futuristic dystopia, a popular setting in other notable books of the era such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (published a few years earlier, in 1945). How is Bradbury's vision significantly different from Orwell's and what does it say about censorship?

6. What does Beatty's argument about "minorities" share with the contemporary debate on censorship and "political correctness"?

7. How do Granger and his men remind us about the origins of stories and storytelling?

8. Bradbury is generally classified as a writer of science fiction. How does the novel challenge the definition of science fiction?