Book: Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Pages: 158
Date: 2/1/25
I chose Fahrenheit 451 because I heard it was a classic. I was not disappointed at all; this book may be one of the best that I have read in the past few years. Given that he wrote it in 1953, his ability to foresee 72 years into the future is amazing. He predicted that TV’s shows & movies would overtake books, that telephones & even text messaging would be a thing, that virtual meetings (social media) would replace real meetings, that there would be a decline in civilization with an increase in overdoses & suicides, society would be “sped up” and standards lowered – all while paying special attention to the growing number of minorities.
In a nutshell, Guy Montag is a fireman. Unlike firemen in our time, these firemen have the job of lighting afire with keroseen books and the houses that contain them, because all books are illegal. One day, Guy takes a book home with him and starts to read it; followed by 20-30 more. His wife turns him in and he ultimately must burn down his own home. He then lights the fire chief on fire & runs from the law, seeking an old college professor named Faber he met in the park years before. Faber is on his way to St. Louis; seeking a printer who can possibly reprint a few chapters of a Bible that he has. The professor gives Guy some old clothes and tells him to follow the old railroad tracks the lead out of the city. During this trek, he meets a group of other independent thinkers – each of whom has memorized a book or at least a chapter of a book. While talking around a fire, a bomb is dropped on the city (the country is at war during this book) and the city is destroyed. This is linked to a phoenix who dies in fire and is reborn, much like society will now start over again and probably repeat the steps that led it to where it is now.
What I learned from this book is listed below. In general, I will list out the predictions that Bradbury predicted and link it to how it currently correlates to that.
a) A large percentage of people are attempting suicide by sleeping pills with 9-10 cases per night. The city no longer sends doctors to save them, just paramedics with special machines. This correlates to the large number of people overdosing on heroin and oxycontin where they send out paramedics or cops to inject them with Narcan to save the overdose patient’s lives.
b) Nearly everyone takes a sleeping pill or lozenge to fall asleep. In the present, nearly everyone takes some kind of sleep aid like Tylenol PM, melatonin, or Ambien to fall asleep & get a good night’s sleep.
c) People invite their friends over to watch large screen TV’s (on 3 or all 4 walls) without really talking with one another at all. They can watch sports, history, reality shows, etc. and never talk with one another. In the present, people watch these types of shows as well as videos of other people playing video games, again without much communication.
d) There are people who try to fool the government and get caught reading books and their houses are burned down. I committed a crime and was sentenced to four years of prison.
e) In the book people are on the phone so much that a husband ran down the street to call his wife to find out for dinner. He could have purchased an ear plug (called audio-seashell broadcaster) to talk directly with his wife. This is not that dissimar from being in direct contact with someone via text or Facetime like happens now.
f) “Picture it. Nineteenth century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then in the 20th century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter, condensations, digests, tabloids. School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English & spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Why learn anything except pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts & bolts.” There are multiple reasons why this correlates to the present. Discipline has been relaxed and you need to look no further than texting to see how spelling is debased and what is texted is carrying over to spelling in the schools. No more cursive writing and everyone wants to be a social media influencer and no one wants to work as a welder, carpenter, plumber or electrician.
g) “Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization. The bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, Chinese, Swedes, Italians, etc. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal as the constitution says, but everyone MADE equal.” This is how the present could be described. Everyone is a minority to some degree and an XXX-American. Regulations are put in place to reduce standards so that everyone can then become equal. Look at the standards for the US infantry – they were lowered so that women of much smaller frame and without the benefit of testosterone can compete in the Army.
h) “The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That is why we lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we are almost snatching them from the cradle.” This has been happening for 60+ years. My dad started school in the first grade, I started school in kindergarten, my son started “school” in pre-K and now nursery schools are half school & half babysitter.
i) “Architects got rid of front porches because they did not like people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think.” In a separate paragraph, “does your family (basically social media friends) love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart & soul?” This corresponds to removing actual visits and replacing them with virtual visits; replacing real friends with Facebook friends. This is almost exactly how it is today. When I was a kid, we visited with our relatives or family friends 3 times per week – now it almost never happens.
j) “Montag visited the bank which was open all night every night with robot tellers in attendance.” This is a perfect description of ATM’s.
k) Mrs. Bowles said, “I have had two children by Ceasarean section. No use going through all that agony for a baby.” C-sections are much more common now, partly due to convenience. I have known people that have scheduled C-sections because that was when their doctor was available or they wanted to baby to come on a certain date for the parent’s ease and comfort.
Lastly, there was a statement in the book where one of the characters said, “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. A child, book, painting, house or wall built or shoes made. Garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so that your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or flower that you planted, you are there.” I cannot agree more with this statement. I am not sure what I have yet left behind, but hope that I will have had an impact in some way on people’s lives. I know that I like it when people still tell a funny story about my dad and he died 40 years ago.
I learned the following things that will increase my prospect for success after prison:
1) This book should be read by every high school & college student to understand the past and how media influences the present. For instance, three weeks ago, the only thing on the news were the fires around LA. Two days after that, the news was all about the release of the hostages from Gaza, almost as if the firest never happened. Two days later, the only thing on the news was the inauguration with just some small attention shown to the Gaza hostages. Soon after that, the news was all about the airplane-helicopter crash in WDC with no attention paid to the previous topics. I wonder what the topic will be in 2-3 days? I am sure that it will be something else. I never watched the news (I did not watch the news before I went to prison) carefully enough to notice how one topic completely takes over the news and stays there until another topic takes over, causing us to forget about the other topic. It is almost as if we only have a 2-3 day attention span for TV news. I think the thing to remember when I get out of prison is to not watch the news at all.
2) It is important to realize and remember how important books are to impart knowledge and tell us stories of the past. How many times have we read a book and then watched the movie and realized that the book is much better? One cannot compress a book that takes 30 hours to read into a 2-hour movie and get the same depth and reality into it. The burning of books should almost be considered a mortal sin. I know that when I throw a book in the trash, it bothers me, even if only a little bit.
3) Lastly, I must find the thing to leave behind when I die. While not something large, I think the creation of the Supper Club with some of our close friends in LaPorte had a larger impact than I know. Each month, one of five couples (and sometimes a few others) would host dinner at one of the homes & everyone would attend. There would be good food, great conversations and friendships deepened. Then, a month later, another family would host. In all cases, each attending family would bring a dish. I know that we never felt as welcome in LaPorte as we did once the Supper Club was created & implemented.
