One Book One Community for Fall 2008

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Fahrenheit 451, is soft science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury. Set in a dystopian society, an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives, as opposed to a utopian society.  The book was first published in 1953. It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.

The novel presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic, that pleasure or happiness is the sole of chief good in life and critical thought through reading is outlawed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper auto-ignites.

Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has asserts that the novel is not about censorship; he says that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.

Bradbury has stated that the entirety of his novel was written in the basement of UCLA's Powell library on a pay typewriter. His original intention in writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries. He has often referred to Montag as an allusion to himself.

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an unspecified future time in a hedonistic and rabidly anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control, filled with lawlessness in the streets, from teenagers crashing cars into people to firemen at Montag's station who set their mechanical hound to hunt various animals for the simple and grotesque pleasure of watching them die. Anyone caught reading books is, at the minimum, confined to a mental hospital while the books are burned. Illegal books mainly include famous works of literature, such as Whitman and Faulkner, as well as The Bible, and all historical texts.

Montag finds that he is questioning this society and his role as a fireman, destroying books, thereby validating what society has become.  He embarks on a dangerous emotional and physical journey to find answers to his many questions.