World Famous Comics: Fahrenheit 451 (Cliffs Notes)
Fahrenheit 451 (Cliffs Notes)
By: Kristi Hiner Publisher: Cliffs Notes Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Cliffs Notes Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 96 Publication Date: December 27, 2000
Product Description: This is Bradbury's best-known novel. The science fiction tale concerns censorship and anti-intellectualism, carried on in an alternate society that conducts huge book burnings as part of the social agenda. It is a spooky and yet uplifting book.
This concise supplement to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 helps students understand the overall structure of the novel, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author.
Amazon.com Review: In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman
What would you memorize? Great book. Scary look into a possible future if the censors get their way. One of several books assigned to high school students which intrigued me. Several selections in the high school cannon are introspective of the human character. The value of this theme is obvious considering the carefree attitude most of the youth have today. The afterword and the Coda point out some interesting things about rewriting books to include everyone. We don't have to be politically correct ALL the time, especially if it is read it in the historical context it was written. Look at Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
F. 451 I really enjoyed this book, but the story line was a little different then I had expected it to be. This is always a fun book to read, which I will be reading in the future as well.
Fahrenheit 451 Very interesting and prescient, considering it was written 50 years ago - it really foresees the advent of the computer age and lowest common denominator mass media. Saw the film a few years ago and it remained in my mind.
Scary similarities to modern society Fahrenheit 451 is a great book that should not be taken in a literal sense, as it is jam packed with symbolism. In this futuristic setting, nobody seems to be concerned with anything but their own happiness. These people spend majority of their time on frivolous things like fast cars, large televisions, and a type of ear-piece radio. All of the books in the city are to be burned because they create conflicting views amongst the people, ultimately resulting in fighting and unhappiness. Majority of the people are unable to form their own independent thoughts, as the schools are even changed in a way that students only learn facts and not problem solving, logic, reason, or other philosophical subjects. The main character, Montag, is a firefighter that has always done his job (burning books) without questioning. However, after a strange series of events, he slowly begins to develop his own thoughts, and starts questioning the society he lives in.
Please do yourself a favor and re-read this classic if it has been ten years or more [This review is for the paperback "50th Anniversary Edition" of the novel, which contains special additional essays and an interview which enrich the experience of reading the novel.]
I'm not going to recount the plot details since this book should be a part of every book lover's lexicon. (If you have been off of the planet for the past half-century or so, this is a parable, set in the not-too-distant future, about book-burning. But the novel is really about what makes a person an individual. It postulates what people might be willing to give up in order to have "peace of mind," and poses material enough for hours of stimulating debate about the real value of independent thought and its importance to society.)
This review is simply a friendly nudge for those of you out there who have already read this book once, perhaps when you were quite young, and have not re-visited it. I urge you to do so as soon as possible.
I just re-read this incredible novel for the first time in thirty years. I picked it up because my teenage daughter is reading it as an assignment for an English class. I read it in high school, too, and I recall that I enjoyed it. But for some reason I had never re-read it. Bad move on my part. I got so much more out of the book now that I am older and have been in the world for awhile. The novel has aged beautifully. Actually, its insights, in light of our computer age and the changes which are being wrought in publishing and in the education of our children, are astoundingly relevant. This is a novel so current in its political and social re-imaginings that it could have been published last year.
I love Bradbury's books. He is a master story teller. His The Illustrated Man sits on my nightstand bookshelf right beside a copy of Ring Lardner's short stories, Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner and a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short storys, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald-- just in case I need to re-read a wonderful short story or two before sleep comes.
But as I said, I had not re-read this particular book in a long time. Not only did this futuristic masterpiece affect me completely differently when I read it again after such a long lapse of time, but I found so many nuances in the book which are just not present in the movie Fahrenheit 451 (wonderful as the movie is.) I had forgotten how mesmerizing Bradbury's prose is. I had also forgotten that this novel won the National Book Award. It's a treasure, and a novel to be savored periodically throughout one's life.
I especially like this edition which mentions on the cover that it was released as the "50th Anniversary Edition." Not only does it contain Bradbury's 1979 Coda and 1983 Afterword, but there is an illuminating interview with the author where he discusses his own views about how the book has held up to the passing of the years, his approach to writing in general, how he views the "future" we are now living which he imagined in the early 1950s, and even what he considers the weaknesses of the movie version of his book.
This is great American literature. Please re-read early and often.
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