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Book Review: Fahrenheit 451

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By Ben Horton

f451bookcoverFahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. takes place in the not-too-distant future. Protagonist Guy Montag is a “fireman,” a government worker whose job is to burn books. The society he lives in is superficial and fast-paced, and the public is uninterested in anything beyond the present. Montag’s life is jilted when he meets a young woman who has no interest in the material world that surrounds her. She ends up throwing Guy’s life off balance with a seemingly simple question: “Are you happy?” It begins a journey of self-reflection that eventually puts Montag at odds with both his job and his entire society.

I read this book when I was in ninth grade during an independent reading assignment, and it really stuck with me. I’d read science fiction stories set in dystopian futures, but what struck me about Bradbury’s novel was how realistic and farsighted it was. Despite being written in the 1950s, its “parlor walls,” seashell ear radios that people are plugged into at all times, and shallow, distilled entertainment felt very similar to my own digitalized society of big-screen TVs, iPods, and 24/7 media. I couldn’t really relate to the issue of government censorship, but I was able to connect to the idea that books and reading were becoming less popular, that other media were in some way in conflict with a culture of reading and thinking.

The bigger problem for Guy Montag is not the firemen—the government agents who destroy books—but rather the majority of people who have no interest in doing anything about it. This reminds me a Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “Evil only succeeds when good people do nothing.” There are so many distractions in our culture, so many reasons to not read, to not think critically; there are so many opportunities to simply accept the world as it is. Bradbury manages to show us a more extreme version of our society. In doing so, he manages to get us to reflect on the issue. Bradbury manages to package it in a fast-paced, political thriller that will entice even those individuals who don’t read regularly. More importantly, he manages to give us an exciting story that will make us think and may even inspire us to work toward social change.

Other good young adult books that will make you reflect on our society:

About the author:
Ben Horton was a 2012-2013 corps member serving on the Comcast NBC Universal team at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School. 



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