The sympathy of literature fosters our minds to cherish beautiful things and indulge in romance, love, and happiness. With that invisible power of literature comes the great authors’ works who share their thoughts in words and let them speak up for themselves for thousands of generations. Knowledge of that kind is deemed to be so valuable that they are preserved prestigiously in our world. But imagine for a second, a world without any books, where no perseverance of these highly valuable resources is noticed. A world trapped so deep down the rabbit hole that no amount of light can reach in an eternity. Author Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is that type of book, where books are strictly prohibited in a dystopian society, where downfall happens quite miserably.
Ray Bradbury started writing this book in the 1950s and covered the scenarios of that particular era and previous historical and notable events as well. During that era, the effect of communism was at its peak and the ideology of Jewish propaganda was restricted from the soviet union. The historical context of this book is pretty rich, as the book resonates with how things were forming all around the globe. As days went by, things started to cool down a lot. Joseph McCarthy promoted McCarthyism after the severity shown by communism. After that, a new society started to mount where literature was truly appreciated and people started to learn new things.
Ray Bradbury also featured some other things that he thought to be very devastating in the upcoming days. People started to become very addicted to TV and teenagers started to become more trendy in a negative way..
This book tells the story of a man named Guy Montag, a fireman by profession. He was very curious by nature and always wanted to be a close observer. In his world, the two main reasons for people’s death were books and speeding cars. Clarisse McClellan, a 17-year-old girl, with whom Guy Montag met, was found dead because of speeding cars in the streets. Guy started to really question the authority as he was concerned about the burning of books. He was even more astonished when he saw that people who are true to literature, were sacrificing their lives for it. One day Guy decided that he would steal some books and see what really is inside those books. So he stole some from a house and started to read them in his house and stored them in a hidden place.
One day, he faked his health to read those books and told his wife to inform his team leader, Beatty, that he couldn’t join work unless he was totally fit. Beatty accepted that. Guy met with a retired professor named Faber, with whom he had regular interaction with a hidden earpiece technology. They discussed the downfall of literature and what to do next about the books that Guy stole over some time.
After some days, Guy found out that his wife had turned him into the authority and Beatty ordered him to burn his own house with those books. He escaped town and joined Faber to seek help. Faber instructed him to go to a hidden place where a group of people practiced literature and joined them. Without any further ado, he went by. He saw that those people had been reading books and memorizing them so that they could start to write new books when they would be burnt under harsh circumstances.
One interesting fact about Fahrenheit 451 is that the temperature mentioned is the temperature at which paper starts to burn. This book also resembles our past world where books were truly burnt by the people and which Ray Bradbury had seen with his own eyes. A book with such historical context and showing a unique form of dystopia is truly a gift to the world of literature.
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Writer :
Abrar Bin Naser
Intern
Content Writing Department,
YSSE.