By Debbie Hirst – 

*Trigger warnings for the book: fire/fire injury, suicide attempt, war, police brutality, drug abuse.*

“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.” – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (chapter 2)

Here, our troubled protagonist Guy Montag meets with an old literature professor for help in understanding a stolen copy of the Bible (a highly illegal act in Bradbury’s dystopia). This world is bleak from state control, the only warmth emanating from the piles of burning books and their lost knowledge. The message here is simple: people who don’t contribute to society, even passively, only help to destroy it.

Written in 1953, the novel was immediately a best seller and has since claimed 4 awards, including the Prometheus ‘Hall of Fame’ Award in 1984 and the “Retro” Hugo Award in 2004. Several adaptations have been created, not limited to a 1966 and 2018 film reproduction, a 1984 interactive fiction game of the same name, a stage play, and BBC radio dramatizations. Its popularity is largely due to its own metaphoric writing style and deeply explored themes, and the similarity between events happening at the time of its creation. Bradbury spoke extensively about his inspirations for the novel, citing in an interview that as a teenager, he was horrified upon hearing of the Nazi book burnings. Montag was a character taken from another short work of Bradbury’s named The Pedestrian, which was based on a real encounter Bradbury had with a police officer one night. His novel offers itself as a fantastically disturbing parallel to our world, allowing readers to see aspects of the novel that are uncannily similar to their own experiences, pushing them into thinking critically on each page. But why is Fahrenheit 451 still considered relevant?

Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future dystopian society and follows Montag, a fireman whose sole job is to burn houses with books found in them. Mass media and censorship, overpopulation, and violence reigns free in the totalitarian-run world. This changes when he meets a new neighbour, the vivacious and questioning teenager Clarisse, who forces Montag into reconsidering his role and its effects on society.

Bradbury took great inspiration from current and past events for his book, one of them being the Nazi book burnings. Book burning existed long before the 1930s, usually being carried out as an act of government control and censorship of certain realms of knowledge and ideas. Of course, the books themselves were harmless, merely being the vessel of information and ideas that people in power sought to eradicate or control. On May 10, 1933, German university students burned more than 25,000 ‘un-German’ books, allowing an age of culture control and state censorship. There have been countless examples of book burnings throughout history, including the Jaffna Public Library being burned in an act of anti-Tamil violence on June 1st, 1981, destroying over 97,000 volumes. More recently, 10 libraries in Baghdad were burned in 2003 as a result of the Iraq war, destroying tens of thousands of documents and other treasures. This theme of knowledge is the crux behind Fahrenheit 451, with Montag turning from an ignorant fireman to someone who actively participates in rebuilding society at the end of the novel, stating, “And I thought about books. And for the first time, I realized that a man was behind each of these books’. In Fahrenheit 451, books are burned to create an ignorant society by censoring information, allowing for state control as people had stopped thinking for themselves. Montag, in the beginning, did not even know of his own state of happiness until Clarisse questioned him.

Today, libraries are less popular as the rise of the internet has placed much of the information available in books to be more readily accessible online. As a result, the flow of information has changed, including censorship and surveillance, both in and outside of the internet. A vital idea behind the theories of surveillance is the Panopticon model, an ‘all-seeing’ prison structure where the warden could see the prisoners but the prisoners could not see the warden, thus keeping them paranoid into behaving. Michael Foucault used this model to show the similarity in surveillance structures, how the fear of punishment leads to people policing themselves, as they have the knowledge that someone is always watching. This is especially prevalent in the age of social media, where a shared post can be viewed by millions of people in a single day. Not only do those in power surveill the masses, but the masses can in turn surveill those in power and condemn their actions, a most recent example being the racially motivated police brutality against George Floyd in 2020, an African-American man who died as a result of the unjust arrest. Footage of the arrest spread on social media and renewed racial justice everywhere, from nationwide protests against police brutality to statues being taken down and decolonizing history.

But with the good comes the bad, and the rising growth in technology and the influence of mass media brings new fears. Fahrenheit 451 reflects the growing fear of new media, TV in particular, replacing old media like books, and as such being used as a form of state control by distracting people from matters of importance. Most particularly, this is seen in Mildred, Montag’s wife, who relies entirely upon their wall-TV as a distraction from her deep unhappiness. Bradbury used his novel as a critique of the growing dependence on TVs, citing the importance of being intellectually discerning in everyday matters instead of following what is advertised. Books have also been subject to this upgrade, with audiobooks transferring hard copies to be digitally accessible and read aloud, and communities such as Booktok on TikTok acting as a space for readers to share recommendations and reviews. Whilst helping to increase interest in reading, especially in younger generations, it also has a habit of promoting a certain style of the genre, and its growing popularity has caused the trend to become glamorised. According to the Office of National Statistics, 99% of UK citizens aged 16-44 use the internet in 2020, and 89% of children aged
10-15 said they went online everyday in 2020. The constant flow of tele-visual media is portrayed as removing people’s individuality and their ability to remember past events, with Montag and Mildred not even being able to remember how they first met 10 years prior.

Fahrenheit 451 has many elements that we are seeing happen more often each day- the growth of mass media and controlled news, the overexposure to TV and technology, and the conformity that follows it. Bradbury wrote it to inspire people back into reading, and to warn of the dangers technological dependence can bring.

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