Ray Bradbury: A Literary Journey Through Fahrenheit 451 and Beyond
Biography of Ray Bradbury
Novelist, poet, and writer of short stories, essays, plays, and screenplays for film and television, Ray Bradbury was born in Illinois on August 22, 1920.
This well-known American writer, considered one of the greatest storytellers and science fiction novelists of the twentieth century, was born in Waukegan, Illinois.
With a personality filled with great imagination, he began writing at a young age, and from 1943 he devoted himself entirely to writing.
Although he wrote poems, plays, and screenplays for film and television, he is eminently a storyteller, and his most important works are:
Major Works
Martian Chronicles (1950)
This work marks the beginning of science fiction literature characterized by both the flight of imagination and an understanding of the meaning of scientific progress.
The Illustrated Man (1951) and The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
In these two works, Bradbury highlights his ability to express a vision of the world’s imagination and its possible future through the particular history of an intentional character.
Other Works
- Dandelion Wine (1957)
- The Machineries of Joy (1964)
- I Sing the Body Electric (1969)
Fahrenheit 451: A Deep Dive
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) describes life in a future where books are banned and forms of written expression are suppressed. The temperature at which paper ignites and burns is 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
The story follows Guy Montag, a fireman whose primary duty is to burn books. Montag, a rebel, is described by Charles Dobzinky as “one of the purest types of world literature.”
Bradbury’s Inspiration
“In writing this short novel, I thought of a world I thought would appear in four or five decades. But one night in Beverly Hills, just weeks ago, I met a man and a woman strolling with a dog. I kept looking at them, stunned. The woman was carrying a radio the size of a pack of cigarettes, with a quivering antennae. Some wires out of the unit that ended in a cone inserted into the woman’s right ear. There she was, oblivious of man and dog. Listening to distant wind, murmurs and shouts of musical melodramas, walking like a sleepwalker, and her husband knew that he could be there, support for her up and down the sidewalks. This was not a new fact in our changing society.”
The World of Fahrenheit 451
This science fiction narrative describes situations and adventures of an imaginary future. In this classic novel of a literary future, Bradbury’s vision is amazingly prophetic: interactive screens about the size of a wall, streets where cars run 150 km/hour chasing pedestrians, a population that listens to nothing but a steady stream of music and news transmitted by tiny earphones inserted into the ears. Fahrenheit 451 is the most convenient of conformist hells.
Literary Motifs
In this novel, we find a wealth of literary motifs, the most important being “book burning,” which goes hand in hand with other important literary motifs, such as:
- Happiness: The totalitarian government prohibits reading because reading makes you think, and they just want to make citizens happy.
- The Desire for More Information: There are people who want to know more and therefore disregard the law and read to learn more.
- Routines: All routines were so tight that no one stopped to look around; it was not in their plans.
- Individualism: People do not relate to each other, do not talk, and only care about themselves and watching their telescreens.
- Fear: All were afraid to give their opinion; no one had the courage to oppose the law against books.
Time and Space
Time
The story takes place at an inaccurate future time. Future in the time it was written (1953), things that now exist were considered futuristic, such as the personal stereo, computers, color TV, among others. Inaccurate because they did not name any date that can be taken as a reference.
Space
Physical Environment
This story takes place mainly in an urban environment where, despite being in the future, the landscape is described as the modern city. With malls, streets, houses with similar architectural features, with the exception of the layer of flame-retardant plastic that covered them. Within this city is the home of Montag, the main character, which has a living room, bathroom, bedrooms, which shows the similarity with existing houses in terms of organization. In the living room were empty white walls, a little dark, where murals were TVs. In every house, there was an incinerator to burn books. And the room was sealed windows, a bed, and a side of this one nightstand with a phone.
On one side of the city is a river, surrounded by a forest in the middle of it, a rusty railroad out of town and across the land, accompanied by barns and farms.
Socio-cultural Environment
The social environment is represented by two groups: the first is that of the firemen and their families, the second is the intellectual fugitives.
The first group has facilities without any cultural base, which had been the cause of its good economic status, something inconceivable in our time and our culture. The second group consists of people of a higher cultural level, just limited to live with the inconveniences of being a nomadic group. They come to this state for the persecution of the victims.
Culturally, this future society is impoverished by the absence of literature, which leads to a creative drought, unable to provide any progress to their culture.
Families do not tend to live together or interact among them because their time is taken up by the wall televisions who deliver various programs in the living room of every family.
The Sociological
In this work, due to pressure from firefighters to prevent people from knowing the books, the characters are in a state of imprisonment because they cannot seek freedom of thought, opinion, or creation. This is because books are what give us that freedom and creative ability. In the absence of banned or limited reading of human intelligence.
People are fearful of their act on the climate of constant threats of fire by the absence of law enforcement. The company, at this time, it becomes beings acting almost by inertia and, to some extent, are prevented from thinking and knowing the realities of other worlds. They are under the head of an authoritarian government that thinks for them; they just follow orders that are given.
Narrator
The narrator is omniscient and is outside of history; neither the protagonist nor witnesses are telling the story.
Some examples are:
- “Faber was in that steaming pile of coal and had no identity.”
- “Montag could read the lips of Mildred what is said on the threshold.”
Among the existing types of narrative, the one that fits this novel is “in media res,” because the narrator knows only part of the main character’s life, and because the character no longer exists in the work.
“Was a particular pleasure to see things consumed, seeing things blackened and changed.” (Opening sentence)
Major and Minor Characters
Major Characters
Guy Montag
Montag was a fireman at first, i.e., was dedicated to finding and burning books, which were banned. He stood out among their classmates, and for this, he was to rise. As he was not allowed to each have their own thoughts, Montag was like all other people. But after meeting and talking to your neighbor, there was a change in him, and she urged him to read the books he burned, as it was forbidden by law because these books were people thinking. Thus, Montag began to have their own thoughts, to criticize the society in which he lived, and decided to follow his own thoughts and then go and become a man-book.
Mildred Montag
Mildred was Mrs. Montag. She was very wise; the most important thing in her life, besides being popular, was to follow the laws and thus be recognized as an ideal citizen. She was able to leave her husband for not breaking the rules. For this was a More from the “mass”. When you have a blood transfusion, begins to show feelings, which had been forgotten over time, but then removes this effect and returns to being the same person submissive and obedient to the law before.
Captain Beatty
Beatty was the fire chief and was completely convinced that the laws were the best for society. He believed that to live without problems and think everyone should be equal. He was very strict and schematic but could tell when one of his inferiors had some work done well. Although it was a very cultured man, was not allowed to have their own thoughts to not break the law and avoid problems with others. Nothing stopped him to achieve his goal; he was very persistent in their ideas and purposes.
The Book People
Men and women of all ages living in the woods and abandoned train stations in small communities. They voluntarily decide to leave the circle of ignorance in which they lived and began to read books. As this was forbidden, we learn each one a book of memory and transmitted orally to the people, not to break the law.
Minor Characters
- Black
- Stoneman
- Mrs. Phelps
- Mrs. Bowles
- Granger
- Fred Clement
- Dr. Simmons
- Professor West
- Reverend Padon
Analysis of the Archetypes
The Hero
The hero was Montag as he was able to leave his life, his high position in the fire, his wife, his house, etc., just to defend their ideas and fight for them no matter how far to a good future for all people that they could know what was in the books.
Women
They were not very important in this society. Its function was to socialize with premiums (animated TV show.) That’s it, followed the laws as the rest of the people. The only exception is the master and women-book they struggle to carry forward the human mind at the time by any means.
Antagonists
Captain Beatty
Although the fund was a good person, he was in charge of preventing people from thinking, to burn the books and to arrest all the people who do not comply with the laws, what is absolutely prejudicial to society.
Fabian
Fabian was a firefighter. He was jealous of Montag and was all the time looking if Montag did something wrong to accuse him and always tried to frame him.
Milestones
- Guy’s encounter with Clarisse.
- Burning the house of the woman, with her inside.
- Guy steals a copy of the Bible.
- Guy pretends to be sick to not go to work.
- Beatty visits Guy.
- Montag visits Faber.
- Alarm at Montag’s house.
- Beatty is killed, and Montag knocks out Black and Stoneman.
- Montag escapes to Faber’s house.
- Faber advises and helps Montag.
- Montag escapes into the forest.
- Guy’s meeting with Granger and others.
- Police kill an innocent man and claim it was Montag.
- War breaks out and the city is destroyed.
Book Summary
Guy Montag is a fireman, and his mission is not to extinguish fires but to provoke them. What burns are books, and the houses of their masters with them.
He once met a young girl named Clarisse McClellan, who will inspire you about the freedom and spontaneity of thought, who would evoke the comforting feeling of being different in a mass society where everything is standardized, including people, where all loses its focus, its essence and vitality for routine social activities entertainment and leisure, immediate pleasures and empty.
Montag’s wife, Mildred, is part of the web of idiotic people who care for this kind of life and whose highest aspirations are focused on buying a new TV that can invade a mural wall of the room of the house and fill the fictional reality of broadcast programs. A wife that Montag does not really know if he has real feelings and to the side which feels like a stranger in front of a stranger.
In one of his regular nights out to cause fires after a tip from someone against his neighbor, something extraordinary happens: the lady of the house and loves his books lover refuses to leave his place and finally burn the whole. This is the straw that breaks the camel’s instinct of revolt Montag, who decides to pose as sick and stop going to work for a while. Another issue is the book that was made at some point in the house of the woman, who hid under the uniform and is brought home. Curiously it be a copy of the Bible, perhaps the only remaining in the entire city or perhaps in the State.
Beatty, his squad leader, will make a visit home and tells the whole reason (or folly) of his exceptional career, which could be summarized as “Keepers of Happiness” ‘Custodians of our peace of mind’ in a world in which uniformity prevails over all things. “The technology, exploitation of the masses and the pressure produced the phenomenon of minorities” was a demand, not an imposition of governments but a natural evolution. People want to be happy for that continually and what better than being all equal and thus do not fear us to each other and not give rise to unfavorable comparisons. Saturated and pleasures and emotions that give us no rest stop and think, reflect.
Beatty’s speech, which is essential for the reader as the core of the novel, Montag represents clear to the obvious warning that lurk authorities before his dangerous flirtation with the other side of the law. Then, when the captain was, Montag began to analyze some books that were hidden, and she needed to know more, so went to Faber, an elderly man, scholar, literary materials. Make a plan to end literary censorship. Guy comes home and finds that Mildred had invited two friends, and Montag angered by the stupidity of women begins to read a poem. That night in his turn, sounds the alarm, raise the car and come home to Montag. Guy Beatty forced to burn his house, and afterwards, burning knocks the captain and his two comrades. He begins to run rampant until it reaches the house of Faber who proposes to escape to the woods along the old railway line, and lends some clothes. Montag escapes into the woods, where he finds a genius of culture, escaping justice for the same as him. Police unable to admit they had lost Montag kills a bystander, and explain to people that this was Montag. The next day while walking with no fixed destination, are among the trees that had unleashed the war and that the city was reduced to rubble Montag with all its inhabitants