Helpful Score: 1
This is a book I should have read back when I was a teen, but somehow I never did.
The book is about a fireman named Guy Montag, living in an America where books are illegal. Those who own them are whisked away for re-education, and their books are burned by the firemen. Books, after all, contain ideas, and those ideas can be dangerously subversive and interfere with the happiness that is everyone's God-given right.
There are essentially two poles that Montag moves between, and each is revelatory in what it says about America as it may have been, and America as it may be. The first pole is Clarisse, an unusual 17-year-old who stops to enjoy the world around her. She smells flowers, listens to the wind, and becomes the voice of How Things Used to Be, when people talked with one another, and neighbors knew one another, and people stopped to enjoy themselves and allowed themselves to be miserable at times. She's the naif innocent, but she represents the purity of what even 60 years ago Bradbury sensed was being lost.
The opposite pole is Beatty, the fire chief. He's slick, he's polished, and he's the ardent apologist for the cold new world. He talks about how dumbing ourselves down has led to greater contentment and happiness. Ideas are simple and sterile, and being entertained has become the goal of every person.
And just think, Bradbury wrote this before the days of widescreen TV, before we had 24-hour cable and satellite signals, and before the advent of the Internet with its personalized entertainment options.
The book is about a fireman named Guy Montag, living in an America where books are illegal. Those who own them are whisked away for re-education, and their books are burned by the firemen. Books, after all, contain ideas, and those ideas can be dangerously subversive and interfere with the happiness that is everyone's God-given right.
There are essentially two poles that Montag moves between, and each is revelatory in what it says about America as it may have been, and America as it may be. The first pole is Clarisse, an unusual 17-year-old who stops to enjoy the world around her. She smells flowers, listens to the wind, and becomes the voice of How Things Used to Be, when people talked with one another, and neighbors knew one another, and people stopped to enjoy themselves and allowed themselves to be miserable at times. She's the naif innocent, but she represents the purity of what even 60 years ago Bradbury sensed was being lost.
The opposite pole is Beatty, the fire chief. He's slick, he's polished, and he's the ardent apologist for the cold new world. He talks about how dumbing ourselves down has led to greater contentment and happiness. Ideas are simple and sterile, and being entertained has become the goal of every person.
And just think, Bradbury wrote this before the days of widescreen TV, before we had 24-hour cable and satellite signals, and before the advent of the Internet with its personalized entertainment options.
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