Books: Fahrenheit 451

I’m pretty sure this book is based on my nightmares. The main premise is that a fireman’s sole job is to burn any and all literature. You’re forbidden to read, your main source of entertainment comes from a room with four screens of televised content. Just the thought of it makes me want to scream.

And you know what? When one fireman exposed himself to books for the first time, it turned his world upside down and made him realize that life as he knew it wasn’t living at all. The lack of books had caused technology to storm in and separate people. Everyone around him was sucked into their podcasts and Netflix rather than having human interaction. Of course, this book was released in 1953, but Ray Bradbury proved himself quite the prophet. The seashell ear pieces are today’s Mac AirPods. The four rooms of immersive television feels like it’s on the verge of being invented. The soulless creatures who feed off of these things could be us if we aren’t careful.

The irony is, that the head fire chief, who fiercely believes in the destruction of books, quotes great authors regularly. He uses them as a way to prove the confusion that books cause, and why people should stay away from them, while giving ample evidence that he was (is?) a hardcore reader. Which sounds about right. I find that the people I know who voraciously hate something for no good cause are usually the biggest hypocrites around.

That being said, this book, though it never explicitly says it, is far more about censorship than burning books. Even in our current times, we find schools banning books, or words and phrases being edited out of our literature so that we don’t taint our precious children’s minds. Which honestly, I think we’ve wrapped the cocoon a little too tightly around our wee ones. When I grew up, Little Red Riding Hood killed the big, bad wolf. Nowadays, he just gets chased off so you know, he can feed on someone’s else’s unsuspecting grandmother I guess.

Regardless, I always like a book that has two levels. One on the story level that is completely fictionalized, and the second, that reflects what may be happening in current society. Don’t ban my books or censor what I read. Let me decide what I can handle and digest. Otherwise? We’ll be living in my nightmare.