Fahrenheit 451 is a famous science-fiction novel written by the American author Ray Bradbury. The novel originated as the short story “Bright Phoenix” (1947). Bradbury enlarged the story into the short novel The Fireman (1951) before the expanded version was published in 1953 with the title Fahrenheit 451.
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel. That is—rather than describing an ideal society (a utopia), it represents a bleak society. At the time the action of the novel begins, the United States is on the brink of war with an unidentified enemy. The government exercises strict mind control over its citizens, especially by banning the ownership and reading of books in favor of commonplace state-run television. An elite fire corps is responsible for burning books in the homes of citizens. Occasionally, homes are burned with their book-reading owners still in them.
The novel’s title refers to the supposed temperature at which paper burns. A fire captain in the novel explains that the government bans books because books confuse readers with complex thoughts.
The central character in Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman. Montag gradually comes to question the state’s book-burning policy and begins to gather and read his own books. After he is forced to burn his home because his wife has betrayed him, Montag turns his flamethrower on his fire captain and incinerates him.
Now an outlaw, Montag makes contact with people dedicated to preserving books by memorizing them. At the end of the novel, only this small band of book lovers preserves the human spirit. Everything else seems ruined, as invading foreign airplanes destroy Montag’s former city with bombs.
In 1966, the novel was made into a motion picture directed by the famous French filmmaker François Truffaut.
See also Bradbury, Ray; Truffaut, François.
