Source: Goodreads
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to set fires and burn all of the illegal books in the city. He loves his job, even takes pride in the lingering smell of kerosene, until the night he meets Clarissa. The self-proclaimed insane seventeen-year-old changes Montag’s life in an instant, and once his brain starts turning over all she has said it cannot stop. But thinking is almost as dangerous as reading in Montag’s world, and the consequences are more than he could have imagined.
As we follow Guy Montag through his life post meeting Clarissa, we are given a small glimpse into the world in which he lives. Just a taste, but enough to be absolutely terrified. Highspeed hovercars, fireproof houses, talking walls, banned books, incessant advertising on every hyperspeed subway car, and the loss of all free speech and free thought. If that wasn’t bad enough, the firehouse dog will chill you to your bones.
This book has been on my list to read for more than half of my life. I wanted to read it because it was about books. I didn’t want to read it because they were going to burn all of the books. And back, and forth, and so on. If I had actually read Fahrenheit 451 at twelve or thirteen, it probably would have had much less of an impact on me. I wouldn’t be familiar with the majority of the works mentioned. I wouldn’t know what was being burned. Reading it at twenty-five, I was extremely aware of how influential the books were. Plato, Shakespeare, The Holy Bible, and millions of others. It is easy to believe that people would have rather died in the flames than be forced to live in a world with no working logic, a world that is enslaved to media through seashell earpieces.
Fahrenheit 451 is the first thing I’ve ever read by Bradbury, but his words have a liveliness to them, even in the slow and quiet parts, that many writers lack. It makes everything interesting, from the chattering of a seashell earpiece to the read and yellow flames licking up the side of a formerly fireproof building. I can’t wait to dive into more of Bradbury’s stories to see what secrets they hold.
HHC Rating: 5 Stars