Review | Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

by Ray Bradbury

If you haven’t read any Ray Bradbury lately, right now is a fantastic time to read Fahrenheit 451.

Published nearly 70 years ago, when computers still filled rooms and were the provenance of the military and large universities, 1953 saw an armistice in Korea, the Rosenbergs executed for stealing the atomic bomb for the Soviets, Chuck Yeager set a speed record in the X-1, Elvis recorded his first album, and TV Guide was published for the first time, featuring Lucille Ball on its cover.

And yet, Bradbury seemed to see our day in so many ways.

Ostensibly, Fahrenheit 451 is about burning books, and the motif of burning them carries throughout. Montag is a fireman, but not one who puts out a fire. Instead, his work is to put to flame the illicit and illegal: books.

“It is a pleasure to burn,” he says. “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”

Talk about “cancel culture.”

And yet, the flamed consumption of books is only the beginning of Bradbury’s prophetic vision and not the main thrust of his argument. Instead, as he later confirmed in interviews, it is about the dumbing down of people and “being turned into morons by TV.” Yes, McCarthyism was in the water when Bradbury wrote is Fahrenheit 451, but television was the greater threat, according to Los Angeles Weekly’s Amy E. Boyle Johnson in 2007 interview with Bradbury. It would give factoids, tell you when Napoleon lived, but it could teach you nothing about him.

“They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.”

Mildred, Montag’s wife, plays the role of the empty and compliant citizen, who spends her days watching “parlor walls” or wall televisions that run 24 hours a day, eerily predicting modern reality television (and maybe virtual reality, too). Mildred is also addicted to pharmaceutical relief from life without feeling or meaning, even overdosing without realizing or caring. As Montag recognizes the emptiness of his life and begins to seek it from the books he is burning, the strain and the distance begin to show a world where technological instant gratification and mass media controls and suppresses creative and independent thinking.

But wait! There’s more Bradbury predicted:

• Mildred wears “seashells” or “thimble radios” in her ears that could easily be earbuds.
• People talk to their “digital” friends through their wall screens, and while these are actors, it isn’t far from the same terminology that Facebook uses for its platform (and where this message you’re reading is posted).
• Social isolation, even while people are glued to their screens. Clarisse McClellan is the 17-year old neighbor that first sparks awareness in Montag because of her interest in the world, in rain, in the world’s potential for beauty.
• Self-driving cars. Bradbury has an almost palpable disgust for the speed of mechanical vehicles, whether it is the jets carrying death that screech overhead or the cars that speed by threatening death to any daring to be a pedestrian.
• Electronic surveillance. He wasn’t alone on this point. George Orwell saw it, too.
• Abusive and manipulative media. Whether writing for short attention spans or controlling and manipulating narrative, Bradbury did not think highly of constant sensationalized news.
• E-books. I kid you not: Bradbury once said that e-books “smell like burned fuel” to him, and would not allow it to be published until almost 2012 when he allowed digital publication because it wouldn’t be possible to have a new contract without e-book rights.

Also, war: I don’t see this mentioned in a lot of the stuff written about Fahrenheit 451, but Bradbury seems to worry about the arrogance of America and the ease with which war will be conducted when we can drop a bomb from a supersonic jet from tens of thousands of feet in the atmosphere. Americans will not care about the war when it costs them nothing and when they cannot see the impact of war on those around them, on their own family, on themselves. Indeed.

I’m to beginning to ramble, to follow tangents, so let me circle back to where I began: why now is a good time to read Fahrenheit 451.

Simply, if the internet has shown us nothing it is that we are none of us as aware of how we got to the present moment. If we are really to solve the problems that are facing us–whether it is pandemics, racism, political polarization, and social isolation and mental health and finding meaning…and so much more, we won’t find it in mass media and 280 characters of snarky social media or the constant scrolling of images and memes (though I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve shared a few good ones in my time).

No, we need books. We need the outdoors. We need quiet. We need creative thought. We need independent thought. We need to be able to have the freedom to think and assess and argue and debate and discuss and, maybe, find compromise, agreement, disagreement, and, even, tolerance. But tolerance only happens when we can understand and grapple with ideas.

I don’t know that I hold with all that Bradbury predicts: I can find myself challenged, moved, provoked, or inspired by something on that probably-too-large-television screen on my wall, and I’m not the Luddite that I probably seem. Also, I really like my earbuds, I like books and the music and the podcasts I listen to through them. But I also recognize that they disconnect me from others and that when I want to connect with others–my daughters, especially–I’ve got to take them off and make eye contact, hug, listen, and communicate. But, it’s worth it. It feels me with meaning when I connect.

And that may be the most important message from Ray Bradbury–we are social creatures that need each other to find meaning, and technology can risk cutting us off from each other, even as it flips the serotonin switches in our brain.

“It is a pleasure to burn.” But oh! The empty, black ashes that are left behind when we burn!