February 1951, contemporary literary period, science/dystopian fiction. The story was written in 1953, about the future of America, since the contemporary period is from 1945 to the present day, it has a lot of varying characteristics. A main characteristic from the 1950 was anger, and frustration. Ray Bradbury contributed to this concept by showing how aggravated he was about the uprising of governmental power through his writing, as seen with the government not allowing books, and that all of them must be burned. The literary period was also greatly affected by the previous wars, which is show through the burning of books, which was an idea from the Nazi party. Empowerment was also a theme in the 1950’s, which is shown through Bradbury’s writing with Montag who was going against the government because he believed in being able to have books.
The main conflict in this story is man vs. society, because it is about how the government is removing information from the citizens. The citizens will have less knowledge over time, so they will not know what is going on around them. The story is man vs. society, because the main character Guy Montag, is understanding that the government is trying to remove this information, and he is uprising against it.
The protagonist in the story is Guy Montag, because throughout the story he starts to understand that the government is trying to remove information. Which he believes should not be allowed, so he uprises against the government and starts to read, hide books, and run with others who have the same beliefs.
The antagonist in the story is the government, because they are the ones burning books to retain information from the citizens. This way they are able to manipulate citizens, and basically completely control them.
One of the complications in the story is that Montag is a fireman that owns books. In the story firemen burn books, rather than put out the fire. Since he owns books himself, and wanted to read after meeting Clarisse McClellan, he is thrown into an odd position. A second complication is the death of Captain Beatty. Guy Montag killed Captain Beatty as he was trying to escape from being attacked over his library. A third complication was when he was a fireman and had to burn down an old lady’s house, since she owned so many books. The old lady refused to leave so she ended up being burnt down with the house, this was the moment Montag first started to realize that he was interested in books.
The narration is third person limited omniscient. This affects the tone, since the narrator is limited to only knowing what is happening to Guy Montag and his thoughts. It affects the mood, because Montag is unhappy with how the world around him is, and that is the only point of view the narrator knows..
The climax in Fahrenheit 451 is when Captain Beatty came to Guy Montag’s house after he has heard that Guy has books in his household. Beatty ordered the station to burn all of the books, so Montag threw a flamethrower at Beatty and ran. This fixes the problem with Captain Beatty, and allowed Montag to chase the freedom of knowledge.
After the conflict with Captain Beatty is resolved, with the death of the captain, Montag runs as he is chased by the hound dogs, police, and helicopters with news castings. After a while of the search for Montag he is able to find an area with others who are like him, as they plan to escape.
The story is set in the future of America, with a non-specific time span. The author uses foreshadowing to reveal that the story is set in the future. The organization is spatial, which helped develop the themes of the story through details of the world that Montag lives in.
One of the themes of the story is conformity, throughout the story people are told that they can not be interested in books, and the books must be burned. Another theme is media, since citizens are constantly receiving updates about the events going on, such as always wearing a seashell radio, or when Montag was running after being caught with books, and had the entire search being announced everywhere. Censorship is another theme, since the government has banned all books in the society, and sets fire to the ones that still exist, which allows them to censor information from citizens, allowing them to only know what the government wants them to know.
Censorship is the primary theme in the story, because the story is based around the idea. It is important since the book is referenced in the future, the idea of having only knowledge that is most likely specified for a particular reason, which allows a miscommunication in what is going on around them is terrifying. It relates to life because the news now only reports what they want to, and most likely not the complete truth. This was recently seen with hurricane Florence, where meteorologist are making it seem like the water levels and winds are higher than they are.
The story is great, because it is intriguing to the reader, since the reader has not been in the particular experience that Montag is in, and the author included great details to make it even more interesting. The author’s purpose is to have the reader understand the idea of censorship, even though there are books in the world, there is still certain censorship occurring. The author was very successful with carrying out the idea of censorship throughout the story, as it started and ended over the idea of censorship through the limitation of books in the society. This book is best for readers who like dystopian stories.
An article by the New York Times (Bahrani, Ramin. “Why ‘Fahrenheit 451’ Is the Book for Our Social Media Age.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 May 2018, (www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/books/review/fahrenheit-451-ray-bradbury.html.), mentioned how Fahrenheit 451 was written not long after the introduction of black and white tv’s in America, and how Bradbury was probably scared for the future of America over the introduction of this new technology, which is a coincidence since the book has a movie. The idea of technology taking over is introduced in the book through the seashell radios. They also mentioned how he was worried about Readers Digest, and only reading headlines, while half of the words on line have emojis attached to them, and we slowly lack more and more words in are daily vocabulary, and make up random ones that we call slang. They also mentioned how the world is becoming more viral, where we tweet are thoughts, and post are memories through pictures, and how it’s almost like an act of rebellion to read a book. Which is true, society can almost be manipulated by anything just through social media, as seen through fake news. An article by Barnes and Nobles (Somers, Jeff. “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.”
The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, Barnes & Noble Reads, 17 May 2018, (www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-fahrenheit-451/.), mentioned how the book is not really about the removal of books, but the censoring of them, which fits with the idea of the vast amount of technology in the story, almost like they are losing words in their vernacular, and Montag and his wife weren’t really able to hold a proper conversation with each other, which might have been more than just the lack of similarities. The article also mentioned how the government was not the problem to the burning of books, but the citizens were. Mainly through racism, and gender roles mentioned in former literature and how it upsets certain groups of people, which is also shown in current times, where there is destruction of historical artifacts over these ideas. They also mentioned how the title Fahrenheit 451 is not based of the temperature at which paper diminishes, since it can at other temperatures, and that it was just because it sounded cool. This makes complete sense and makes everyone who said the idea of the title before sound idiotic because everyone was clearly oblivious.
