Title Fahrenheit 451
Author Ray Bradbury
Year Published 1953
Kind of Book Sci-fi novel/Dystopian
How strongly I recommend it 9/10
My Impressions I read this in highschool and remembered liking it, but didn't remember much about it. I reread it at the age of 32 when I could appreciate it. It is a scary wake-up call in the way that 1984 is a wake up call. There were many ideas about the importance of thinking for oneself in a world where the government/media discourages free-thinking/
Date Read Feb 2022
Favorite Quotes
“There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house.”
"Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?"
"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war."
“My wife says books aren’t real. Thank God for that. You can shut them, say hold on a moment .You play god to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claws that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes. It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason, but with all my knowledge and skepticism I have never been able to argue with a 100 piece symphony orchestra. Full color. Three dimensions and being in and part of those incredible parlors."
"Those who don't build must burn."
Big Ideas
Our society treats people as being disposable (like tissue)
Much of people's conversations are void of substance (small talk not intimacy)
Much of people's conversations are void of disagreement
Sometimes the fact that you feel nothing for someone is what makes you feel a very strong emotion
There is something important in books
Because
People are willing to die for books
A creation (art/invention) can take someone a lifetime
The judgement of someone else's (art/invention) takes 30 seconds
If the people in society are comfortable (not bothered or in enough distress) they will not take action to change things
The bigger the market/audience/population the more minority groups there will be in it
The more minority groups there are the more groups there are to offended
The more minority groups there are to offend the more the writers will be afraid of writing anything potentially offensive
The more writers are afraid of writing something potentially offensive, the more generic and superficial the content will be
The government doesn't need to be the ones enforcing censorship for people to censor themselves
Pressure to not say anything offensive from minority groups can cause a great deal of censorship
As a nation we will soon start banning any content that offends any group
There is no telling who an educated/well-read person will want to attack
The government, in order keep from having unhappy and potentially riotous citizens, don't give people two sides to a question and make them forget that they are at war
The government fills people with unimportant 'facts' to make them feel like they know a lot, while simultaneously preventing them from thinking for themselves or questioning the government
Reading Philosophy and Sociology makes people sad/depressed
There is (or will be) a decline in people sitting on their front porches, talking and rocking
People don't really listen to people anymore
We can't talk to the walls because they're also talking to you (ie. TV)
Books are a receptacle for something special in life that can also be found in nature, friends, old movies, old records, and ourselves
Books are where we store lots of things we are afraid we might forget
The magic is not in books, but in what books say about life
The 3 things missing from society right now are
1)Quality/texture/nuance of information
2)Leisure to digest the information
3)The right to carry out actions based on the interaction of 1 & 2
The more detail (pores/imferfection) a book has the more truth it contains
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies
Books are feared because they show the nuanced (sometimes ugly) truth of life
Comfortable people want everything to be neat and pretty
In today's day and age we hide the dirty/ugly/imperfect aspects of life from ourselves
We have deluded ourself into thinking we can shut out the dirty/ugly/imperfect aspects of life, but we can't
Nowadays we hardly have a moment to think where we are not sitting in front of the TV, or engaged in some type of high excitement activity (eg. Driving 100mph)
The Television thinks for you
Because
The Television is immediate and all encompassing
and
The Television medium doesn't allow you to pause and question what it is telling you (like a book does)
When you're reading a book you can read at your own pace and pause and question/think about what the author is asserting
Therefore
Books allow the reader to make up his or her own mind (ie. Play God to it)
When you aren't afraid of dying, you take any risk you want
Books remind us of the mistakes other people made (ie. Remind us that we're fools)
Most people don't have the time or money to learn about/experience must of the things we can learn about/experience in a book
If you don't use your life force to build/create something you will use it to destroy something
If you hide your ignorance from the world you will never get set straight (and therefore learn and grow)
Other people can use arguments from other books against the arguments you learned from a book
Asking 'why' about a lot of things will make you unhappy
Surprising Facts
Ray Bradbury predicted apple wireless earbuds and bluetooth in people's ears 24/7
“She had both ears plugged with electronic bees that were humming the hour away…She was an expert at lip reading from 10 years of apprenticeship at seashell ear thimbles.” pg18
//foreshadowed wireless earbuds