This post contains affiliate links. You know how you have some friends for decades, but you don’t talk to them regularly. If the friend is a good one, when you do meet again, you can pick right up and carry on the friendship where you left off. That’s what picking up Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury felt like. I read this book in high school and promptly read all the Bradbury works I could find. Just recently, PB & J Girl and I read it together for her high school curriculum, and I felt like I was meeting again with an old friend.
About Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a firefighter, but not the type you think. He doesn’t put out fires–he starts them. In the world Montag lives in, ALL books are banned. If a person is caught with a book in their house, the firefighters burn that book and the person’s house.
However, one day Montag meets Clarisse, a free spirit who causes him to start questioning the life he knows. He realizes those around him are deeply unhappy and simply filling their lives with nothingness to escape their unhappiness.
After this realization, Guy enters the world of books. He reads them, he talks about them, and he is soon in a heap of trouble.
My Thoughts on the Book
I read this book over three decades ago, and while I remembered that I loved it, I didn’t remember all of the details about it. As soon as we started reading, I remembered why this book grabbed my attention. I LOVE Bradbury’s writing. His use of figurative language brings the story to another level.
In addition, reading this book in our current political and social climate enhanced the story for me. Montag’s wife has “the family,” which is a large screen on her livingroom wall where people talk and interact with her. She spends more time with her “family” than she does with Montag or her friends. I couldn’t help but think of people mindlessly scrolling on their cell phones today. How did Bradbury have the foresight to see what was to come?
PB & J Girl can be a bit fussy about books that she enjoys, especially when reading the classics, but she liked this one, too.
I give Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 5 out of 5 stars on the Mom’s Plans’ scale.
I have never read this book, but think about Orwell’s 1984 often. How did he foresee the internet! In in 1998, as a high school senior, thought it was kind of far fetched. Haha
Right?! I’m fascinated by how much these authors were able to imagine that came true. I wonder, if they were still alive, what they would guess about the upcoming decades.