Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash

We have finished reading and analysing Fahrenheit 451 as a class! While the book is relatively short, and we have only been working on it for a few weeks, there is so much to unpack! In this post, I will be summarising my final thoughts, attaching a discussion I had on the book with my group, and responding to another group’s discussion.

Fahrenheit 451 is full of complex themes and ideas that relate to the events of the 1940s and 1950s, and are still relevant to us today in some ways. One of the central themes is the idea of censorship, which was very relevant to Bradbury, who lived through the Nazi book burnings and McCarthyism in the US. There are many examples of how the government in the novel censors and controls the population and the media they can access. This is seen in the burning of books itself, but also in the way that children are taken at a very young age and put in school, and taught what to think. We can even see it in the subjects taught in school, none of which are subjects that teach students to critically think, such as math, science or literature. One major symbol in the book, which is representative of government control, is the Mechanical Hound. At first, Montag doesn’t pay much attention to it and sees it as harmless. However, as Montag’ conscience grew more guilty, he became much warier, despite the people around him having no problems with the hound. The hound represents the government’s constant presence, and how they always seem to be watching and listening.

One of the most interesting themes and ideas presented in the book is the apathy of the masses. At the end of part one, we learn from Beatty about how more and more books were banned and censored due to the controversy they created, and how eventually intellectuals were looked down upon. This allowed the current, authoritarian government to take control. We also see the effects of mindless entertainment and lack of feeling experienced by the inhabitants of the city. Clarrise describes how people’s conversations have lost meaning and substance, and how taking walks or even spending time together on front porches is deeply frowned upon, since they both encourage people to spend time away from their entertainment and actually observe and think. But it goes deeper and darker than that. People grow to be so indifferent and numb that they become scared of emotion and pain, and correlate thinking with unhappiness. Along the way, it almost seems like people lose their humanity because of this. Near the end of the novel, we see how it is common for children and teens to try and kill people. And when Montag comes back home and tells Mildred of the woman who was burned along with her books, she shrugs it off, branding the woman as a criminal who deserved it. This theme may even stretch to the attempted suicide of Mildred and the death of Beatty- while both of them seemed perfectly fine on the outside, there seemed to be a part of them that was truly broken and that wanted to die.

Overall, these themes and events serve to warn us about the danger of censorship and apathy. Faber’s story, of how he was a coward in the past, really hammers this home; when people don’t speak out, they lose their voice. However, it also touches on the importance of books. When Montag turns up at Faber’s doorstep, urging him to help him learn from books, Faber talks about the three things missing in the world- quality and texture (of books and media), leisure (to digest information), and the right to carry out actions based on what we learn. According to Faber, books are hated because they “show the pores”, or the imperfections, “in the face of life”. Books also don’t teach us what to think, but how to think. As Faber says, you can argue and beat down a book, but you can’t argue with the parlour walls. Finally, people need to be able to talk about and act on what they learn, and not be criminalised for different viewpoints. I think all of these points are really profound, and capture the essence and importance of books really well. However, I think that Granger’s point about the importance of books and stories that he makes at the end, is also very important- books and stories need to be remembered. If we can remember from the books and stories of the past, we can learn from them, and burying books only serves to help us repeat our mistakes.

I think many of the themes and messages in this book are quite reminiscent of today’s world and are very important for us to understand. For example, Beatty talks about how people’s attention spans became shorter and shorter until books were out of the question, which is eerily similar to all the talk of short attention spans today. I think this even extends to the theme and idea of apathy in the book. Many of us have become quite numb and desensitized to all the bad news- the shootings, the climate disasters, the corrupt and inept politicians- all of it barely lingers in our memory before we move on to the next thing, and sometimes, it feels like nothing surprises us anymore. This is scary to think about and compare to the book since we know that it was the apathy of the masses that set the stage for disaster. In addition, our social media culture today seems to be very relevant to what we see in the book too. Social media can provide us with quite a bit of “mindless” entertainment, and serves as a way for many of us to escape our current reality and all of the controversy around us. However, even when social media gets political, the algorithms of these platforms often make it so that we are mostly interacting with like-minded people since the algorithm simply shows us posts they know we will like – it’s a continuous feedback loop. Only interacting with like-minded people only serves to divide different groups more and more, rather than each learning from each other.

It was also crazy to read this book during this time in our world. Not only are we living through a global pandemic, but we are also seeing a huge movement take place- the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, which has been so pervasive that it has spread to countries across the globe. This year has been a turning point for all of us, both globally and individually. We have had to reflect on everything we are seeing now, and what we want our future to be like. While all of these events, including the death of George Floyd, have been absolutely tragic, I am glad that we have had the chance to really think, and I’m glad that many of us are using the pain we feel and channelling it into action.

Overall, re-reading this book was really amazing, and I’m glad I got to work on it in class. I think I wasn’t able to truly absorb and understand the true meaning of the book when I first read it, so I’m grateful that we could discuss it and work on it in class. I think we could also benefit from remembering all the lessons from this book, especially in a time like this. We need to reflect and truly engage with the issues we are grappling with now. We need to hold on to the emotions we feel, and embrace the pain and sadness in order to use it for change. Most of all, we need to remember what we have learnt from this pandemic and this year so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

Our Group Discussion

Here is the link to a group discussion I had with my classmates which summarises our thoughts on the book.

My Response to Group 4’s Discussion

Link

I enjoyed listening to this discussion, and I agreed with many of the points they made! I liked Shreya’s point about this being a critique of “the perfect world” for some people, namely those who dislike controversy and politics. I also found their debate on attention span and social media interesting. I also resonated with Raniyah’s point about the political correctness we see everywhere these days. I also agreed with everyone’s points about the importance of context and the need to understand it when consuming media, and about the importance of critical thinking. Finally, the points they made about who is allowed to ban and disagree with books and movies were super interesting and important. The discussion was great to listen to!