What kind of novel is fahrenheit 451

Interestingly, the impetus for the characters and the situation of Fahrenheit date earlier than "The Fireman. I see now were rehearsals for my later novel and film Fahrenheit If Montag is a burner of books who wakens to reading and becomes obsessed with saving mind-as-printed-upon-matter, then Lantry [protagonist of "Pillar of Fire"] is the books themselves, he is the thing to be saved.

In an ideal world, he and Montag would have met, set up shop, and lived happily ever after: library and saver of libraries, book and reader, idea and flesh to preserve the idea.

By Bradbury's own admission, the thematic obsession that explicitly emerges in Fahrenheit is the burning of books, the destruction of mind-as-printed-upon-matter. And although Bradbury never uses the word "censorship" in the novel, one should be aware that he is deeply concerned with censorship. Book burning is a hyperbolic phrase that describes the suppression of writing, but the real issue of the novel is censorship. If "Pillar of Fire" is read sensitively, one finds that not all books are in danger in the future dystopia an imaginary world where people lead dehumanized, fearful lives , but particular kinds, or genres, of books are at risk.

This theme, of course, is not precisely true of Fahrenheit in which all books that are burned by the "firemen" are in danger. This novel may be understood as a kind of hyperbolic extension of the tensions of the earlier story. Why are only books of imagination, fantasy, and the macabre and occult threatened in "Pillar of Fire"? Indeed, the character of William Lantry in "Pillar of Fire" and the character of William Stendahl in "Usher II" are quite similar, as are the authors whose books are threatened — Poe, Bierce, and other American fantasists.

Moreover, a Burning Crew is referred to in "Usher II," one that eventually burns Stendahl's beloved library of imaginative literature, and the Burning Crew is obviously a synonym for the firemen in Fahrenheit The question may be asked in another way: Why is Bradbury sensitive to the popular condemnation of fantasy literature? By extension, this question becomes an issue of the literary merit of works of popular literature.

Why is Bradbury particularly sensitive to the critical reception of fantasy literature during the post-World War II period? The question becomes even more problematic when one considers that Bradbury himself was publishing science fiction and fantasy in legitimate magazines, or slicks , such as Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post , not in the pulps , or disreputable magazines. As Peter Nicholls observes, "[Bradbury's] career remains the biggest breakthrough into lush markets made by any genre of writer" Far from traditional literary discussion, the questions posed may offer another way of reading the novel — as genre science fiction.

After all, Bradbury's obsessions with the suppression of fantasy literature may express, at the psychological level, the wrestling with the validity of his own career as a fantasist. Neither one displaced the other, since reading and watching aren't the same experience.

There is an egalitarian obsession that people are all capable of being informed and intelligent. We now send everyone to college, despite the fact that for many people, college is not a viable or useful route. The same elitism that values degrees values being 'well-read', and since this is the elitism of the current power structure, it is idealized by the less fortunate subcultures.

Bradbury became informed not because he read, but by what he read. He could have read a schlocky pop novel every day for life and still been as dull as the vidscreen zombies he condemns. He has mistaken the medium for the message, and his is a doubly mixed message, coming from a man who had his own TV show. Author 1 book followers. I am in 6th grade.

My Language Arts teacher assigns us a book report; tells us we can choose the book but that our grade will be based on the maturity of the novel the report is based upon. My mother and I are in K-mart. I've mentioned to her about this book report to be done, and so before we leave with a basket filled with clothes I know I will be embarrassed to wear, we stop by the rack of books. She selects a few pulp paperback titles, throws them into the cart.

A few days later she hands me Fahrenheit You should like it. When does a 12 year-old boy like anything that his mother does? I admit to myself that the cover looks really awesome - a black suited, menacing man shooting flames over something that looks like books. I give it a go. Tearing through the pages, the chapters, the three sections, I finish it over a weekend and am in awe.

A fireman that starts fires? Books are outlawed? I look at the small library that I've had since childhood; a shelf of about 30 books. They now look to my 12 year old eyes as books of a child. Fahrenheit is the book that launched me from childhood, my first book dealing with the adult world. I ask my mother to box up my old books and put them in the attic. I am proud to start a new library with this novel as my first edition.

I carefully, lovingly, sign my name on the inside cover. Let the firemen come, I think, I am proud to be a book-reader. I continue to read this book again and again through the years. I enroll in a college course at Penn State my freshman year, simply because this book is on the course materials.

I memorized the entire poem Dover Beach because it is the selection Bradbury chose to have Montag read aloud to his wife and her friends. As the years roll by, and I age through my 20s and 30s, I noticed that fewer and fewer of the people I know read any books. Even my avid reading friends from childhood moved on to their careers, their marriages, their children.

In the late s a friend invited me to his house to show off a proud new purchase - a television screen the size of one of his walls. I mention how frightening this was, that he was basically mainlining Bradbury's foreshadowing.

He handed me a beer and fired up Star Wars ; told me to relax. I watched the movie and felt like a traitor. The last time I read F was about 10 years ago - I think I was afraid that if I were to pick it up again that it would diminish in its importance to me - much like Catch and The Sun Also Rises. But on this first day in May I have a day-trip to Socal for business and I bring this book with me.

And I love it, all over again, as if reading it for the first time. Until Infinite Jest came along, this was my favorite book. I remember why. I joined Goodreads in with low expectations. I am not a social media person. I've given up twice on Facebook; the last time for good. But there was something I found here that reminded me of Montag's joining the campfire of fellow readers. We may all be from different walks of life from places all around the world, but we come here often and with excitement - because we love books.

They are some of the most important things to us and our lives would be ruined without them. So to you, my fellow Goodreaders, tonight I raise a glass to each of you, and I want to say thank you thank you thank you for making my life better, for exposing me to authors I would have never known, and for reminding me that although I'll never get to all of the books I want to read in this life, I can stand on the shoulders of you giants and witness more wonders of the written word.

Somehow, I have gotten through life as an English major, book geek, and a science-fiction nerd without ever having read this book.

I vaguely remember picking it up in high-school and not getting very far with it. It was an interesting premise, but far too depressing for my tastes at the time. Fast-forward 15 years later. I just bought a copy the other day to register at BookCrossing for their Banned Books Month release challenge.

The ALA celebrates Banned Books Week in September, so one BXer challenged us to wild release books that had at one point or another been banned in this country during the entire month. Fahrenheit fits the bill -- an irony that is not lost on anyone, I trust. Everyone knows Fahrenheit is about the evils of censorship and banning books, right? The title refers to the temperature at which paper burns. I didn't intend to start reading it. I really didn't. Somehow it seduced me into it.

I glanced at the first page and before I knew it, it was in the morning and I was halfway through with the thing. It's really good! No wonder it's a modern classic. Montag's inner emotional and moral journey from a character who burns books gleefully and with a smile on his face to someone who is willing to risk his career, his marriage, his house, and eventually his life for the sake of books is extremely compelling. That this man, product of a culture that devalues reading and values easy, thoughtless entertainments designed to deaden the mind and prevent serious thought, could come to find literature so essential that he would kill for it!

Something about that really spoke to me. It raises the question: why? What is it about books, about poetry, about literature that is so essential to us? There is no doubt in my mind that it is essential, if not for all individuals although I find it hard to imagine life without books, I know there are some people who don't read for pleasure, bizarre as that seems to me , then for society.

Why should that be? Books don't contain any hard-and-fast answers to all of life's questions. They might contain great philosophical Truths, but only subjectively so -- there will always be someone who will argue and disagree with whatever someone else says. In fact, as Captain Beatty, the evil fire chief, points out, no two books agree with each other.

What one says, another contradicts. So what, then, is their allure? What is it that made Mildred's silly friend start to weep when Montag read the poem "Dover Beach" aloud to her? Where does the power of literature come from? I think the reason that books are so important to our lives and to the health of our society -- of any society -- is not because they give us answers, but because they make us ask the questions.

Books -- good books, the books that stay with you for years after you read them, the books that change your view of the world or your way of thinking -- aren't easy. They aren't facile. They aren't about surface; they're about depth. They are, quite literally, thought-provoking. They require complexity of thought.

They require effort on the part of the reader. You get out of a book what you put into the reading of it, and therefore books satisfy in a way that other types of entertainment do not. And they aren't mass-produced. They are individual, unique, gloriously singular. They are each an island, much-needed refuges from an increasingly homogeneous culture.

I'm glad I read Fahrenheit , even if the ending was rather bleak. It challenged me and made me think, stimulated me intellectually. We could all do with a bit of intellectual stimulation now and then; it makes life much more fulfilling. Sean Barrs. If knowledge was burnt, then the people would be left in a complete state of utter innocent ignorance. There would be no room for free thought, that way they could be told anything about history and themselves.

If all books were burnt, then they are just sheep to be led into a future dictated by the government. To make it worse the men who do it enjoy it. Books have become illegal; thus, owning them is a form of disobedience against the state and a violation of the law. The books are burnt by a special group of firefighters, yes firefighters, which hunt readers mercilessly.

When they find them, they burn their beloved collection and leave them to die. One woman burns with her books by her own choosing rather than submit to ignorance. And they cannot understand why somebody would fight to the death to defend the written word. Guy Montag is one such firefighter. He lives a mundane life with an equally mundane partner. He carries out the book burnings, like the others, without a second thought until one day an innocent young girl changes his life forever.

She is his next-door neighbour and she is a closet book reader; she asks him a series of questions that makes him realise how stupid and worthless his existence is.

He takes solace in a collection of books he has stolen whilst on the job, a symbol that he and the world could one day be free. The knowledge he gains changes his perception of the world forever. Books have fallen out of favour as other mediums have taken priority over them. What is the Mechanical Hound? How does meeting Clarisse affect Montag? Why does Faber consider himself a coward?

Why are people so violent in Fahrenheit ? Literary Devices Genre. Science fiction Fahrenheit fits into the science fiction genre because it depicts a future in which technological advancement has significantly transformed society. Dystopian fiction Fahrenheit is an example of dystopian fiction, which is a subgenre of science fiction that depicts a negative vision of the future. Previous section Setting Next section Allusions.

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