Fahrenheit 451 – Official Book Review

About a year or so ago, my friend Professor Lunsford – who I’ve come to regard, over the past several years, as the official sponsor of my personal library – made one of his many contributions to my reading repertoire. It was a small novel called Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

Now, it’s been my assumption, for many years, that most people my age (and also many of Mr. Lunsford’s former students who are much younger) were introduced to this book sometime during their high school years. I was assigned many of the traditional classics by a batch of different English teachers during my own schooling – A Wrinkle in Time, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, The Crucible, etc. – but, curiously, never Fahrenheit 451. However, I was always aware of the book’s existence, and about a month ago, my curiosity finally caught up to me.

Of course, I admit that my interest was stirred when I noticed that there’s a newer film adaptation from 2018 starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon as the protagonist and antagonist, respectively.

And my interest was further stoked, when I became bored with the movie less than 20 minutes into it, and thought, “there has to be something better in the book.”

Well, there usually always is.

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” –Montag

Now, eventually, I did return to the movie and slog my way through it (in several 20-minute sittings) after I finished the novel. To say I was dumbfounded by the film’s departure from Bradbury’s novel, would be an understatement. I have no real problem with the film’s attempt to upgrade the technology in the story – although Bradbury’s 1953 sense of where computing technology was going to take the human race, was remarkably presentient – and preserving his original vision in modern film would have been really interesting to see. They’re doing something like that with the new Fantastic Four movie – capturing that 50-60s futuristic sci-fi aesthetic. So, it’s definitely doable. But leaving that visual aspect aside, the departure from the original story is what really ticked me off. The complete omission of major characters, the subverting of primary character’s motivations, the lack of any coherent climax, and the total fabrication of the final outcome, make the entire story into something that they should be ashamed to call by the same name as the novel. It’s a shoddy attempt to slap the veneer of a respected, well-known story onto the shell of a made-for-TV Sci-Fi channel movie. I don’t know if this is just a lack of talent in terms of creative direction, or if it’s Ramin Bahrani’s deliberate attempt to Rian Johnson himself into movie history by taking a big dump on the source material he inherited from a greater mind – either way, the result is appalling.

So, in other words, stick with the book.

I think this is going to become a personal mantra of mine, more and more.

This week, while randomly perusing YouTube, I was presented with the thumbnail of a praise music video by the previously unbeknownst (to me) duo of Eminem and Adele. I couldn’t resist clicking on it…

It begins with an old clip of Billy Graham preaching a sermon, and proceeds, from there, into what appears to be Adele and Eminem getting saved – well, Justin Bieber saved at least… (I’m not judging them; I don’t know if either of them professes faith in Christ), but according to this video – they’re one Sunday away from leading their church choirs into the glories of the Eschaton.

Don’t watch it.

Anyway, I suspected the video was fake, knowing the digital playing field has changed drastically over the last several months. And as I searched through the video’s description, it confirmed (buried deep in the bowels of the drop-down description) that the entire thing was generated by this guy named Al who’s been making waves recently.

Dang it, Al. You got me again, you scallywag.

But honestly, this kind of thing is only going to get better (or worse, depending on your point of view), and very quickly so. The complete fabrication of digital and audio media is very rapidly going to become undistinguishable from recorded reality. This is only the beginning.

So!

My point is, STICK WITH THE BOOK!

I know that books, and print media in general, have been racing toward the line of obsoletion over the last decade, but – I believe – in a world where digital media is becoming increasingly unreliable and false, a return to print media is the ultimate antidote.

Build your libraries, all you book nerds! And not just with books. Collect physical media of all kinds – even physical copies of movies on whatever you can find – VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and Betamax… music on CDs, records, cassette tapes, and 8-track cartridges. Put them into your wills, and impress the importance of their survival upon your children, grandchildren, little cousins, nieces and nephews!

The Internet can be turned off, or bombed out of existence one day – OR – everything on it will, more likely, become unreliable, and unreal.

Physical media will be much more resistant to this.

And that’s what Fahrenheit 451 is all about – the resilience of physical media.

It paints the picture of a dystopian future where humanity has become lulled into a zombified state of dependence on total immersion in digital screens, that project narratives undistinguishable from reality. Sound familiar?

The primary aspiration of homeowners, is to convert all four walls of their living rooms (not just three) into wallpaper screens that immerse them into their favorite shows. The characters in the sitcoms even include them at times.

And when they retire from the living room, they fall asleep at night with the assistance of pills and earbuds. That’s right. Bradbury thought of this 72 years ago.

Anyway…

The music and programs they’re listening to and watching, are tightly controlled for them – by the State. Most of them, don’t even realize this, and they don’t care, as long as they are sufficiently stimulated when they need to be, and sedated when they need to be.

The hero – Guy Montag – is not sufficiently stimulated or sedated. Because, the spirit can never truly be manipulated or subdued – without consequences.

Montag is one of the “Firemen,” a taskforce of Gestapo-like squads who maintain control over freedom of thought, by seeking out and burning to ash, any books that exist. They take a flamethrower to all physical media and art forms. Bradbury gave the novel its name from the degree of heat at which paper becomes combustible.

As the novel explores, freedom of thought cannot be controlled. It’s part of the natural state of humanity. And Montag is the lens through which we investigate this phenomenon. As the novel progresses, we see him go from mindless automaton, to independent human being.

I won’t give the details of his transformation away, because it’s not that many pages, and you should read it. Or, if you must, at least listen to it on audio.

But the answer to humanity’s decent into darkness, comes in the form of a nuclear holocaust, that spares a small band of human beings taking refuge in the countryside, outside the cities – those who refuse to bow to the gods of society.

They commit to memory the books that they are able to preserve – making their brains into hard drives that can only be erased by death. Montag is coached into this process by those who are older and wiser than him – the elders, dressed in rags, surviving on scraps of bacon, who huddle over fires in the dead of night, out in the woods, passing on their wisdom.

And I think there is something beautiful in that. Campfires are, after all, the original screens.

And bacon… well, that’s not so bad, as far as scraps go.

And as for Montag – the books he commits to memory are two of the best ever written – Ecclesiastes and Revelation.

No one will ever be able to burn those two books out of existence. I guarantee it.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury