May 09, 2003 09:01 PM
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(Updated May 14, 2003 12:47 AM)
When I found out that we would have to read this book for our English class, I couldn’t help but groan. I’m usually not interested in science fiction stories, and from reading what the book was about, I knew it would take me a while to get interested in the book. Once I started reading the book though, I couldn’t believe that it kept me interest from the very beginning to the end.
What is this story about you ask. Well, the story is set sometime in the future somewhere in an American city. In their society, books are not considered valuable. A fireman’s job (instead of preventing and stopping fires), is to start fires. They set fires to books that are hidden by citizens. In other words, you are considered to be a criminal if you are caught reading or preserving books.
The main character in the story is a fireman named Montag. He is a fireman who truly enjoys his job. Then, one day he meets his new neighbor. She is a young girl named Clarisse. Montag finds her interesting because she is different from everyone else he has met. She takes time to smell the flowers, enjoy the rain and take pleasure from the simple thing in life--a quality that Montag’s modern world has lost. Clarisse changes Montag by asking him a simple question, “Are you happy?” When asked this question, he realizes just how unhappy he really is. His wife Mildred is completely cut off from the outside world. She goes into their parlor and watches their “Parlor walls”, which are nothing but three big screen TVs. She doesn’t talk to Montang and when she does, she keeps asking him to buy another TV, so she could have all four walls covered. All these things make Montag truly realize that life could be very different if people read books.
From then on, Montag wants to be a different person. He wants to bring back books to their society. Will he be able to do so in a place where people don’t care about books? What will happen to the society that is so hooked on technology? To find the answers to these questions read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
When it was first written (in the 50’s), this tale of a society's dependency on technology was considered science fiction. But, reading it in today’s world, the reader feels how true the book is.
