Fahrenheit 451
June 5, 2007
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
Del Ray 1987 paperback edition
Part the the required-high-school-reading-dystopian trifecta (which included "1984" and "Brave New World") it's Bradbury's most literary and adult piece of fiction (that's worth talking about anyway). The basic tale of a future world where books are outlawed and firemen hold large bonfires whenever they are found is one of pretty powerful imagery (Bradbury has gone on record recently to say the novel is not about censorship, which means he has either forgotten what he wrote or never read it in the first place). It's unfortunate that the story itself isn't nearly as compelling as the idea of the story. An especially weak faux-hopeful ending ruins the dystopian dread the rest of the book works to build up, while the characters are Bradbury's usual stock of wooden stand-ins. The novel wears its politics on its sleeve and boils down the idea of censorship into a simple enough package for middle-school, early high school reading programs, but others might be less moved.
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