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Summary: Terifying ideas...
Review: Part of the appeal of this sort of book, books like '1984' or 'Brave New World' is that we can look at them retrospectively. Written mostly in the earlier part of the last century, they predicted just what sort of messes we would have created for ourselves in the next. The ideas their authors came up with were always just possible; in many cases some of the things the authors dreamed up came true, or almost so. It's chilling to consider that these books were written as 'worst case scenarios' of the time in which we now live.So it is with Fahrenheit 451 - much of the appeal of this book is it's consideration of just how far the TV craze would go, and how dumbed down the western world would become. The book is set not very far into our future, possibly this decade - how close are we to the sort of censorship Bradbury imagined? How much has our sense of community disappeared? How dumb are we? The interest for me, lay in these questions. I wouldn't consider 'Fahrenheit 451' great literature. I didn't think the writing was particularly skillful, or the plot incredibly suspensful. But the ideas Bradbury writes about make this book great. It really is one of those modern classics you should bother to read, especially if you enjoy Dystopian fiction like 'The Handmaid's Tale, 'Brave New world', or '1984)' or science fiction of any sort. Another one that, although it may seem like light reading or pulp as you are reading it, will stay with you for a good few days after you've put it aside and moved onto the next book.....
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Summary: Burn it!
Review: This book, whilst very good to begin with, fails in the end beacause Bradbury attemptes to beat his message in too late in the piece. He spends too much time describing the story, and his message, as he has rendered it, is too complex to cram into 180 pages. I was told to read this book in school, but was not forced, as i have a passion for reading. Anyone who now loves the name "clarrise" for the sole fact that she was a nice person in the novel is a wierdo. But, other than that, i found it to be a tolerablebook, up until the death of beatty, when the novels plot development peters out, and we are left feeling cudgeled for the rest of the novel by its "moral" Im only 13, so nyah BURN THE BOOK! bradbury has failed miserably in creating this book.
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Summary: Poor Man's Brave New World
Review: This "classic" left me with the feeling as though it had been written by a very talented 10th-grader. The basic premise was interesting (if somewhat borrowed from Huxley's Brave New World)but by virtue of sophomoric storytelling, overly unrealistic and flowery dialogue and huge leaps in logic the writer wasn't very effective in suspending my disbelief.
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Summary: A glimpse at the future
Review: The classic novel, " Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury, takes a journey into the future. The novel is about a fire fighter named Guy Montag whose job is to actually start fires. In the society of the future, no one asks questions or thinks for themselves. Montag and his fire starting colleagues are paid to light books on fire and watch them burn. Montag meets a seventeen-year old girl who tells him about times when people treasured books and when a fireman's job was to extinguish fires. Filled with curiosity about the past, Montag starts hiding books in his home and reading them. His wife reveals his secret to his co-workers and Montag is forced to burn his own stash. Montag then meets philosophers who have stored the contents of books in their heads so that when people need and want the knowledge, it is there. Bradbury brings out a statement of theme that is not revealed without careful analysis of the story. The theme that Bradbury presents is that even the simplest things are important and make up a culture and society as we know it. One man realizes this and finds in himself that he was allowed to appreciate and
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Summary: Farenheit 451
Review: I think this is a very good bok, but I thought it was a little borring. I read this book as an English III assignment. It was very insightful to the society we live in today and yet in some aspects very far off. Bradbury's predictions of how the future will be/is is very weird and cool and disturbing of how our society is and how he talked about school shootings long before they ever occured. I think overall this was a good book and a very good book for discussion.
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Summary: Intense, searing and frightening, if a little confusing.
Review: While sometimes hard to follow, Ray Bradbury's science fiction classic is still intense and searing when at its best and bears many frightening resemblences to our own world. This futuristic civilization regards cursory items such as magazines as better than books; the television has pretty much taken over; there's even a mention of kids frequently killing each other. Pretty amazing stuff, considering Bradbury wrote this way back in 1953. At least we haven't gone so far as to burn all books, but who knows; maybe things will get so bad that we just might.... CALLING ALL GUY MONTAGS!
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Summary: ¤~*ItS GrEaT*~¤
Review: This book is a bit boring once you start reading it, but it is a good book after you get into it. I would love to have read this book a long time ago. The plot is not hard to follow also! I love it!
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Summary: A testament to all of the Guy Montags out there.....
Review: This book is a classic on censorship. It also probes at human values and is almost existential in Guy's conflict over the wrong he feels is being committed in the burning of the books. This could even be a chapter out of Huxley's "Brave New World" in that the public is conditioned by what they can and cannot read through censorship. An essential for anyone.
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Summary: Surprise--it's pretty good
Review: As an English teacher, I felt like a loser because I had never read FAHRENHEIT 451, so I picked up a copy and read it. It's pretty good. I guess I avoided it because it was written by Ray Bradbury and I didn't consider him an accomplished author. Now I do. The book just might surprise you. It is science fiction at its best.
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Summary: Astronomically Good Book
Review: Sometime in the not-so-distant future, the world will change severely. Soon people's homes will be completely fireproofed, leaving no use for firemen as they are thought of today. But they will not be out of work; their role will simply change. In an ever increasingly television oriented society where yesterday's classics are now thought of as censurable tripe, firemen will be starting fires, not stopping them. Their new role will be of a secret police that search out the hated books and raise their temperature to the level at which books burn, Fahrenheit 451. This is the premise of Ray Bradbury's novel. Bradbury's story is an ominous look into where he fears society is presently headed. It is in many ways a warning against existing increasing rates of demoralization, drug use, addiction to non thought-provoking activities, and illiteracy. He easily communicates how such simple trends could evolve into societal brainwashing and individuals who say they are happy, think they are 'social,' and simply spend all their time in their parlors (the ultimate in new television technology). One of the self-proclaimed 'odd' people of this book went decidedly against the norm in saying, "But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?" However, this book is not solidly a story of doom and gloom. The main character is a fireman named Montag and he ends up providing hope for the reader. While he is not a godlike hero, made up of courage and thew, he does fit the quixotic template in that he is a sad classicist in a new and frightening time. After only a small jolt of reality from an imaginative child, he realizes the world could be made of truth and beauty, rather than the contemporary cheap thrills and insatiable cupidity. Furthermore, this tale has much in common with two other critically acclaimed classics. Montag's government is merely interested in controlling the people while waging war with other super powers, much like the opression in George Orwell's 1984. Additionally, individuals hold very little sacred, no one cares for human life and everyone is looking for a cheap (often-dangerous) thrill. This is a public where men who handle drug overdoses are not concerned that such matters happen "nine or ten a night," all of this general apathy is mirrored in the novel Brave New World. But, again, Bradbury is a creative author, and his visions of the future are not nearly as hopeless as 1984, or so alien and drug based as Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451's point is twofold. While it warns against where society is headed, it also shows that it only takes good people like Montag to bring society back from the brink of ruination. This faith in the goodness of the common man does not falter and shows optimism that is not always part of such works. Upbeat themes can be hard to find in such otherwise bleak forewarnings, and even in most normal classics it is hard to find a purely happy ending and/or main point. Seeing as this book was published over forty years ago one would assume that it is out of date, but this is not true. It is a science-fiction book without any unbelievable differences between this projected world and our own. Also, Fahrenheit 451 is easily read. The book communicates its point in a mere 160 pages, none of which are filled with incomprehensible vocabulary. It contains enough action for those who like it, and plenty of Montag's self-realizations for readers interested in seeing characters delve into their own mind's inner recesses. This book should be a joy to anyone who chooses to pick it up. Conversely, this easily enjoyed book carries with it some strong meaning. Montag's experiences are a warning to people who would get so used to their impersonal lifestyle that they would become desensitized to many of the world's horrors. Upon finishing the book, one is sure to be more guarded against choosing an easy path, and therefore becoming less of a human. Bradbury did well in bringing the way life became more and more impersonal and barbaric. "I put up with (my children) when they come home three days a month; it's not bad at all. You heave them into the 'parlor' and turn on the switch. It's like washing clothes." In likening children to annoying creatures which deserve as much attention as laundry, the character who made this statement both disgusts the audience and says the statement as if it were only natural. The author has a talent for letting his audience see situations both as they normally would and as the characters do. Even through the opening we see some of the book's many themes played out in Montag.
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