Ray Bradbury #2 (Fahrenheit 451)

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Sorry for not posting. My weekly routine was disrupted by Hurricane Sandy, so I waited for the next Wednesday.

As usual the wiki page is up top. This is going to be an odd response, because I am writing about the entire book. Fahrenheit 451 is split in three parts: The Hearth and the Salamander, The Sieve and the Sand, and Burning Bright.

The hearth and the salamander sets the story in a time in the distant future with an off and on war raging, where Guy Montag, a fireman for the city, meets his new neighbor, Clarisse McClellan. She moved in with her intellectual family, which is unusual for the time period. She talks to him about how she walks about and notices things. She speaks of how many kids her age are just killing each other, in car wrecks and other 'accidents.' It's obvious that kids like Clarisse are a dying breed of children that still ask questions. However, the fireman in this dystopian land aren't the suppressors of fire, they're the starters. It's their job to start them in the homes of book owners, because intuitive insight that is written, has become outlawed. Montag's strange relationship with his wife is also brought up in this first part. At the end of this piece, we become aware that Guy has been keeping a hidden collection of books in his house over the years. At the end he and his wife Mildred start to read out of some of the books, with their last few fragments of curiosity.

The sieve and the sand starts with Montag reading through the pile of books. Montag starts to discover the greatness of books and decides he needs to take charge. He storms off to a friend he met long ago: Faber, an out-of-work English Professor. Faber gives Montag an earpiece so he can help him figure out what kind of character Guy's Chief (Beatty) is.

The last section: burning bright, is when the firehouse is called to Montag's house, with orders to burn all the books inside. Beatty tells Guy to burn it down himself and throws him a flamethrower. Montag follows through, burns down his house. He than faces and kills Captain Beatty, burning him with the flamethrower. The rest is really just a chase to the edge of the city, where Montag meets a group of homeless book aficionados, who plan to reteach the world. Then, suddenly war is made certain, and the city gets bombed. Starting a new world from the ashes.

One of Bradbury's favorite tricks is where he uses a metaphor in a metaphor, where he has one character bring up a metaphor in conversation, and what that character says is really another metaphor. Follow that? It's okay if you don't,  I'm not sure I completely get it myself. This book as well as other Bradbury books, are quick reads, but don't miss a word, because it can make things very confusing. when Faber is first mentioned, I guess I incidentally skipped it when saving my page, so the character came out of the blue, so I went all the way back again.

Anyhoo, if you haven't read a good Sci-fi book in a while, read something of Bradbury's, you won't regret it.

Thanks For Reading! (It's amazing you could follow that, you probably couldn't)
-drat

Post Script:

What do you think would happen if we ran out of questions to answer (on earth, in society, in any specific field etc.)