I have just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. While I have herd mention of it before in high school a hand full of times, I did not associate what I herd with the book that I arbitrarily decided to read. I piked up the book thinking that it was just another science fiction book and that it would be barely worth reading. The day that I decided to read it was in the middle of christmas break, and I wasn't really feeling the urge to read anything very serious. I had no idea what I was in for. If you've read any of my other posts, you'd know just how much I'd appreciate the book: I read it in two days!
The story follows a fireman named Guy Montag, who, rather than going about his city putting out fires, cruises around with the fire department lighting them. Why do they light fires? to burn books with. I know the premise sounds like a overly political, fear mongering, 60s style dystopia novel. When I started reading it, that's exactly what I thought, early on, but I quickly revised my opinion: Fahrenhiet 451 while on the surface seems lie what I said above, it actually goes way deeper; to me, the book was a classic of the humanities, in that it captured the human condition perfectly.
For instance, while most other books in the genre claim that tyranny is a "top down" situation, the tyranny in this book actually came from the grassroots of the populace, which I think captures the real world far better. The book holds up a metaphorical mirror to our faces and shows us a people who flatter themselves into believing that they are grand and nobel, and that their government is the standard of justice, and that life couldn't be better when in fact the people in the mirror are pathetic and vulgar, and they can't manage to keep a clean room, much less a clean nation. Human nature loves flattery, so when people or media tell us that it is not our fault that we are enslaved by a tyrannical government, we gladly accept it. When people tell us that we have the power to overthrow said government, we take their word as truth. When the media paints us as worthy to be citizens of a marvelous, well ran government, we feel happy and then continue to be slackers. Legions are the similar books that tell us that we are worthy of freedom when we are clearly not.
Fahrenhiet 451 does not lie and tell us we are gorgeous when we are actually hideous, it shows us who we really are. It speaks the truth. To make the parallel more perfect, think of the people in the book and the people today. The people in the book hated to read anything more than trash, They preferred to pretend that they were apart of a sitcom family than to actually have the trouble of being apart of a real one. they had TVs as big as their living rooms, wrapping 360 degrees around the bewitched viewer. The movies they watched had so many frames per second that their entertainment rendered rational thought impossible. They were so shallow that their brains had signs that said "no diving." Whenever anyone tried to discuss anything that was of substance and had depth, the people's eyes would glaze over and they would drool uncontrollably as their mental functions shut down.
Is is too cynical to say that almost everyone I know fits this description? Even I have to wipe the drool from my slackened jaw when I'm trying to work on anything math related. If we truly want to be happy and free, however, then we need to, Like Guy Montag, leave our evil ways and begin to realize that we need to break out the shovels and add some depth to our character. Lovely sentiment perhaps, but the real question is how? 451 Fahrenhiet suggests that we do three things: Meditate, read classical literature, and build authentic relationships.
The story follows a fireman named Guy Montag, who, rather than going about his city putting out fires, cruises around with the fire department lighting them. Why do they light fires? to burn books with. I know the premise sounds like a overly political, fear mongering, 60s style dystopia novel. When I started reading it, that's exactly what I thought, early on, but I quickly revised my opinion: Fahrenhiet 451 while on the surface seems lie what I said above, it actually goes way deeper; to me, the book was a classic of the humanities, in that it captured the human condition perfectly.
For instance, while most other books in the genre claim that tyranny is a "top down" situation, the tyranny in this book actually came from the grassroots of the populace, which I think captures the real world far better. The book holds up a metaphorical mirror to our faces and shows us a people who flatter themselves into believing that they are grand and nobel, and that their government is the standard of justice, and that life couldn't be better when in fact the people in the mirror are pathetic and vulgar, and they can't manage to keep a clean room, much less a clean nation. Human nature loves flattery, so when people or media tell us that it is not our fault that we are enslaved by a tyrannical government, we gladly accept it. When people tell us that we have the power to overthrow said government, we take their word as truth. When the media paints us as worthy to be citizens of a marvelous, well ran government, we feel happy and then continue to be slackers. Legions are the similar books that tell us that we are worthy of freedom when we are clearly not.
Fahrenhiet 451 does not lie and tell us we are gorgeous when we are actually hideous, it shows us who we really are. It speaks the truth. To make the parallel more perfect, think of the people in the book and the people today. The people in the book hated to read anything more than trash, They preferred to pretend that they were apart of a sitcom family than to actually have the trouble of being apart of a real one. they had TVs as big as their living rooms, wrapping 360 degrees around the bewitched viewer. The movies they watched had so many frames per second that their entertainment rendered rational thought impossible. They were so shallow that their brains had signs that said "no diving." Whenever anyone tried to discuss anything that was of substance and had depth, the people's eyes would glaze over and they would drool uncontrollably as their mental functions shut down.
Is is too cynical to say that almost everyone I know fits this description? Even I have to wipe the drool from my slackened jaw when I'm trying to work on anything math related. If we truly want to be happy and free, however, then we need to, Like Guy Montag, leave our evil ways and begin to realize that we need to break out the shovels and add some depth to our character. Lovely sentiment perhaps, but the real question is how? 451 Fahrenhiet suggests that we do three things: Meditate, read classical literature, and build authentic relationships.
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