I just finished reading
Fahrenheit
451 by Ray Bradbury for the
Back to the Classics Challenge. I started this
book a month ago, but it was only the threat of an overdue library fine that
motivated me to finish it. The story is about a futuristic dystopian society
where books are outlawed and firemen burn not only books, but the homes of
people who try to hide them. By the way, a “dystopia” is an undesirable
community often characterized by a totalitarian government, an abuse of
technology, and a general decline in society. A good example is the society from
the
Hunger Games where the government
forces randomly selected children to participate in an annual fight to the
death. Many dystopias involve robots, because robots are seen as the ultimate
dehumanizing element of a society, and
Fahrenheit
451 is no exception. The book-burning firemen are aided by “The Hound,” an
eight-legged robot dog who can sniff out books and impale their owners with his
poisonous fang.
Fahrenheit 451 was
published in 1953 when the fears of McCarthyism, the Cold War, and a nuclear
holocaust were at a peak. People were switching over from listening to the
radio to watching TV, and with all new forms of technology, doomsayers
predicted the decline of intelligent thought. I probably would have enjoyed
this book more if the story had not been drowning in irony, symbolism, metaphors,
allegories, and sometimes just general ranting and raving about the ills of
society. Thank goodness the world did not turn out the way Bradbury predicted (except
for the flat-screen TVs – that part I like).
