I found a copy of Fahrenheit 451 in a Little Free Library on Friday. I didn't take it, since I had a copy at home, but it was a reminder to re-read it. Bradbury's my favorite author after Shakespeare, but I hadn't re-read this one in a long time.
A few themes that emerged:
Obviously, the core theme of the book is that the government controlling information is how it stays in power. This is self-evident to most folks here (and elsewhere), of course. But there are two interesting elements to that here:
First, the history of censorship in this world wasn't from the top down. It started from the ground up, with people protesting specific books and shaming people who read them, coming from both what we'd describe now as the "politically correct" left and the "moral majority" Christians. When the government actively takes over banning and burning books, it was something they were handed as a tool and recognized as useful.
Second, It's reading, not just information, that's really banned. Yes, of course banning history and economics will keep people ignorant, but banning poetry and fiction also stops people from thinking. It's Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach that's the turning point here, bringing one minor character to tears because it's the first time she's actually experienced that kind of beauty. And if we go with the meta here, of course Bradbury's own book is meant to make people think and care.
But while censorship's the obvious (and best-known theme), another huge one is the dumbing down of society with bread and circuses. Guy1's wife and her friends are all addicted to what are essentially reality TV shows (the Kardashian kind, not documentaries), and it's losing access to these (and to the huge flatscreen TVs) that really has her upset with Guy's questioning his career. And when she's not watching TV, she's wolfing down sleeping pills. The government keeps everyone mentally sedate to ensure no one challenges them.
I'd remembered that theme, too (it's hard not to, and is nearly as major as the censorship). The one I'd forgotten is the take on cars and pedestrians. A small but significant part of this dystopia is Bradbury's accurate prediction of how our society would be even more addicted to cars. Clarisse (the young freethinker Guy meets) notes that her uncle was arrested for being a pedestrian. We later learn that she gets run over by a car (though there may be more to that story), as cars speed along roads with no attempt to avoid pedestrians. Walking, in this world, is inherently dangerous. Later, Guy is on the run and has to cross a road, and the only reason a car doesn't run him down is that his knee injury causes him to trip, and a car hitting a prone human has the potential to cause an accident that could hurt the driver.
As someone who always choose to walk when given the chance, this is like another layer of dystopia on top of the ones imposed by the government here. There's no sign that it's an active choice, but there's clearly no concern with or attempt to penalize any of the drivers.
(Aside: Bradbury was concerned with this in other works, too)
There's a bunch of other minor things -- Mildred, Guy's wife, uses what are essentially bluetooth earbuds, Guy visits an ATM at one point, etc. Oh, and of course, I can't read this and not think of one of my favorite stories of his (probably because it was one of the first I read), Usher II from The Martian Chronicles, a tribute to Poe but also a much more macabre railing against censorship and censors themselves.
Anyway, this is enough of a classic that I generally assume folks have read it, but if you haven't, please do. Bradbury was one of the great writers of the 20th Century, and this is one of his masterpieces.
Footnotes
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I don't think it's an accident that the hero of this book has a name that's literally a generic stand-in for "everyman." ↩