Post-Book Discussion Thoughts on Fahrenheit 451

by Tristan

"It was a pleasure to burn," writes Ray Bradbury in the opening lines of his classic anti-censorship novel, Fahrenheit 451, which was recently discussed by teens at Martin Library.

It's an interesting book. Bradbury's commentary on censorship, and a nation full of people who could live in a society without books, is, perhaps, more powerful now than it was when he wrote it. The country of the story is one in which people slowly stopped reading, their attention spans becoming too short for anything other than instantaneous gratification and entertainment in which they could lose themselves entirely. And so books fall out of fashion, and because no one reads them, no one minds when they are burned by those who fear them. Until the day when Montag the fireman, the burner of books, has his eyes opened.

I had read the book a few years back, and I was looking forward to reading it again in preparation for the book discussion. This time however, I noticed that a new point jumped out at me that I seem to have missed before. Montag meets an old English professor named Faber, who tells him that "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

It's not books that Montag's society, our society, turns against: it turns against the things that make us human. We see the instant gratification, the pleasures that could come so easily, with so little work, and turn away from the things which make us think, which make us question, which, in the end, make us human.

Reading through Fahrenheit the first time, I had thought so many of the characters seemed wooden, and I originally believed it was failure on Bradbury's part to fully develop his characters into living human beings -- but now I realize that they weren't meant to be human. They lost their humanity when they turned away from all the things that books represented, and became nothing more than cold robots who would kill for fun, delight in the misery of others, congratulate themselves on being so clever, and never have to open their eyes. Books forced them to open their eyes, and so they were burned. Books, according to Faber, "Show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless."

So, looking in the mirror of Fahrenheit and seeing ourselves looking back, what must we do to change the world before it goes this far? The change, I suspect, must begin within us. Within me. I do not believe there is some vast network of humans who are all waiting to storm the libraries, kerosene and torches in hand, the moment we look away. They are us. We are driven on by the speed of the world around us, but we cannot stop the motion until we ourselves slow down. That is where it begins: taking the time not just to read, but to live. To find life in nature, in relationships, in questioning and exploring and always allowing ourselves room to grow so that we are never stunted by society. Living, as Bradbury says, "As if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." Bradbury was not warning us against a faceless mob, he was warning us against ourselves when we have forgotten to do that, to live like that, which is all too easy to do in the world in which we live.

The book people who Montag meets at the end of the story note that "You can't make people listen." You cannot throw a book in someone's face and tell them to read it. That won't solve any problems. You must change yourself, and be patient for the time when someone, even if it's just one person, wonders why you seem so satisfied with your life while they  find themselves incomplete. And then you must be ready to whisper, not shout; suggest, not force; hope for change, but not demand that they do: for in demanding you will discourage, in forcing you will only cause resentment, in shouting you will only be seen as someone who is not willing to listen. A whisper is willing to listen, a shout only wants to be heard. Hard to do, yes, discouraging, no doubt of it, and yet Bradbury has words of encouragement for those willing to give it a shot: "That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing."