Fahrenheit Rising

 Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time!  I know, I have a lot of those!  Of all the dystopian novels out there that people like to compare to the current day, this one might just be the most accurate to our day.  Animal Farm, 1984, Alas Babylon, Hunger Games, Matched, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, The Giver, and many others all have parallels to our current time and can be said to have accurate truths.  After listening to Fahrenheit 451 again in preparation to teach my teen literature class: Seeing Society Through Classic Literature, I think we are living in Ray Bradbury's world.

We may not have firefighters that start fires rather than put them out, but everything else in this book is our world today.  Bradbury describes a world where no one talks to anyone, no one thinks anything, and no one really does anything meaningful.  Bradbury loved literature and with the rising technology in the 1950s he was worried a great deal about books being made obsolete.  Fahrenheit 451 was written in 1950 and published in 1953.  In Bradbury's world he paints a picture of today with mirror like accuracy.  A world where the technology is the fire that consumes the mind all while the real fire is consuming the real knowledge. He describes something that can only be YouTube in our time and "seashell radios", or "little seashells in ears" that can only be earbuds.  He paints an accurate picture of the talking walls and the screens or TVs that are wall sized that cost $2000 each, which is 1\4 of Montag's yearly salary.  Montag has 3 walls like this in his house and his wife wants a fourth wall.  Mildred, Montag's wife, calls the people on the screens her family, but they are not really her family.  The people talking to her are strangers, but the system is programmed to personalize it to her by addressing her as Mrs. Montag.  Guy Montag calls them "The relatives".  Mildred is constantly talking to them all day and at night she puts the seashells into her ears, and she is constantly listening.  She does not really sleep ever, so every night she takes sleeping pills and sometimes overdoses.  One night Montag gets home from work to find that she had overdosed and calls medics to come and pump her stomach.  He observes that he does not know them.  They are complete strangers, and they talk of having 10 cases like this per night.  Guy has the epiphany that there are billions of people in the world and "I don't know any of them", he laments.  As Guy is beginning to change his mind about many things, the medics act as if this incident is no big deal; it is just the norm.  Mildred has no worry or care in the world and does not know just how serious her condition was.  She just goes on to talk to her fake family nonstop.  

Guy Montag is a Fireman.  On the way home from work one night Guy runs in to Clarisse, a 16-year-old full of life who describes herself as peculiar and strange.  She asks questions that seem so odd to Guy, but he puts up with it because she is so kind.  She asks him if he is happy.  Guy describes to her how he loves being a fireman and that the smell of kerosene is like perfume to him.  She asks him why and how he came to be a fireman and she tells him he shouldn't be a fireman.  She observes that it's the wrong type of job for him.  She mentions that firemen used to put out fires instead of starting them.  Guy thinks she is crazy and doesn't believe her at first, but he starts to think about it.  Clarisse mentions how she doesn't want friends because they kill each other.  She says her grandfather remembers a time when children did not kill each other.  He asks her why she is not in school.  She says, "they won't miss me".  She tells Guy that it doesn't make sense to her to get a bunch of kids together in the same room and never let them talk.  They can't converse, discuss, or ask questions.  She says she doesn't understand why that is called "social" and yet the school and the government have deemed her as anti-social.  She says, "to me being social is what we are doing, just talking here to each other."  As time moves on Clarisse is seen everyday by Guy outside walking, climbing trees, sitting in the sun, watching butterflies, and she brings flowers to his door on occasion.  

Guy thinks of Clarisse as a daughter.  He says, "you make me feel like a father."  Clarisse asks him why he never had kids if he likes them so much and tells her his wife never wanted them.  Guy is only 30, but he starts to realize how he does want children.  When Clarisse tells him she thinks it is sad that he isn't in love with anyone, he starts to deeply internalize that.  He goes home and questions his wife about how they met.  Neither of them even remembers how they met and they've only been married 10 years. This bothers Guy.  A lot of things begin to bother him.... 

He begins to make some poignant observations.  He notices that all the firemen look alike.  They all have dark hair and facial hair, and the same build.  He wonders if that is by design, or that his looks and build are the only reason he got that job.  He notices that the fires are always at night, never in the day.  The calls to set fire to someone's house is always at night.  He ponders that maybe it's because at night the fires look more beautiful and spectacular.  Then, the books have him curious.  He is wondering what they say and questioning why they are burning the books and any house that has them.  If a house has books, they don't just burn the books, but the entire place.  When he is called to an old woman's house to burn it and she sets the fire herself refusing to leave, Guy is traumatized and horrified.  This is the night he truly changes.  He say's "people don't die for nothing".  This old woman stayed with her books and died with them.  There must be a reason she was willing to die in the fire.  That night, Guy Montag also steals a book from her house before the fire is set ablaze.  

Guy becomes sick after this incident and calls in sick to his job.  This is about the same time he also notices that Clarisse is gone.  He hasn't seen her in a few days.  He is worried and asks around about her, but no one knows where she is and most people don't even know she existed. He talks to his wife about the incident and how he feels, but he is only met with disgust.  Mildred is very indifferent towards the old woman who died in the fire.  She thinks the woman was stupid and deserved to die.  It's as if Mildred has no care for the sanctity of life.  She does not care if people are living or dying.  She talks and listens incessantly to her parlor screens about everything that is nothing.  After this conversation with his wife Captain Beatty comes for a visit.  He is the fire chief and Guy's boss.  He lectures Montag on many things.  It is this speech that paints the full picture of the state of this future American society that is today.

One phrase in this that jumped out at me was a short and simple one, but one that explains so much of

this slippery slope.  “The zipper displaces the button, and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.” This illustrates how much time we can save by technology, however that saved time gets taken up by something else usually involving a screen.  Someone telling us how to think or what to think rather than us just thinking to ourselves.  

"Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with."

"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico."

"Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!  Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."

"What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it."

"Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he's on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man's a speck of black dust. Let's not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn them all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean."

".....And so, when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me."

These were my favorite quotes from this impassioned speech, just in case you didn't read all of that.  Very profound indeed!  A world obsessed with material happiness.  A world obsessed with never offending.  A world obsessed with agreement only.  A world obsessed with technology instead of reading and thinking. A world obsessed with the uncontroversial.  A world intolerant of any degree of difference or disagreement.  "None of those books agree."  What's the point of reading, right?  Are we degrees apart from this, or is this our world?

It is after this speech that Montag is unsure about going back to work.  He tells his wife about the many books he has hidden away and that they must read them and then burn them as the chief said.  Montag reads while his wife ignores after being confused by the words.  Montag later makes a scene with all of their friends quoting poetry to them.  One of their friends starts crying due to the poetry and everyone else gets very angry at him for making her cry.  They tell Guy that this is a reason why books are so dangerous.  Guy goes on to call them out on their ignorance.  After this the fire chief shows up at Montag's house.  Mildred packed her bags and leaves.  Beatty orders Montag to burn down his own house.  While his house burns Montag and Beatty fight verbally, then physically.  Montag ends up killing Beatty.  The mechanical dog attacks Montag, but Montag destroys it with fire.  Oh, yeah did I mention there are mechanical, robotic dogs that spy and attack people?  

Now Montag is on the run.  Wait, go back.....before this happens Montag seeks out an old English professor.  He takes him a copy of the Bible and demands that Professor Faber teach him about books and their content.  The Bible he brings to Faber might be the last physical copy in America.  Faber and Montag become friends and Faber coaches Montag of what to say to his friends and coworkers in different situations.  Faber introduces Montag to a secret society that has a plan to hide books in firemen's homes.  This is an effort of resistance to the censorship, book burning, and the current regime.  Montag goes about hiding books and learning of their importance.

Skipping ahead.....Montag is now on the run and Faber helps him prepare to get away.  Montag runs into the forest and follows the river.  A new mechanical dog is now after him.  He runs into a secret book society.  They are outcasts from the city.  They prepare to one day rewrite the books that have been destroyed.  They all have photographic memories and somehow know how to recall the words from a page after only reading it once.  "We too, are book burners", they tell Montag.  They read the book, hoping to later retrieve what's written, and then they burn the books.  They never have any books.  THEY ARE THE BOOKS.  When asked what Montag could offer, he says he doesn't know.  He hasn't read many books but recalls he had read the book of Ezekiel in the Bible.  The society members say they have someone who already knows that book, but if anything happens to him, Guy will be the backup book of Ezekiel. The members introduce Guy to many of the great authors of the past.  "We have books of Matthew, James, and John too", pointing to other members.  They introduce him to Marcus Arelius, Plato, Shakespeare, the writers of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine, and many more.  They inform Guy of their plan to rewrite the books at a later time, after an impending war.

While away from the city in the woods they witness the war.  Bombs are dropped on the city.  The whole place is flattened.  Everyone gone.  Montag thinks of his wife and wonders if anyone knew it was coming.  Did anyone know of this impending war?  Throughout the book characters express their annoyance, fear, or confusion of the military planes constantly flying overhead.  Everyone is probably so distracted that they had no idea what was really going on in the world.  Montag finally remembers where he met his wife.... he doesn't really know if he will miss her at all.  Although he is sad at the loss, it is this moment he realizes that Clarisse was right, he wasn't in love with anyone.  This is another moment where he understands the finality of his feelings for her, and all else he has grappled with.  He now knows who he is and where he stands.  He must move forward with hope and help to rebuild a new society, one that does not censor, burn books, or is so distracted by new technologies.  

The ending of this book is one I just love because we are left with hope.  Many dystopian books do not have a happy ending.  Many of them lack any hope in the end.  As much as I love 1984, the ending is one that is most unsatisfying.  It's like a horror movie with really no resolution.  I guess there is a resolution of the government keeping their promise to kill the main character, but it leaves you with no hope.  Realistically speaking though, that ending is an ending that many succumb to.  It is a true ending for many.  The good guy doesn't always get away or escape.  It's a harsh reality.

Guy Montag was the villain and became the hero, but he lost everything.  He had to go through major change.  His major change is what brings hope, mostly.  It reminds us that we all have the power to turn off the devices and pick up a book.  We have the power to choose what we read.  The power of choice is way better than the power to ban.  I don't believe in banning anything.  I do believe in protecting the innocence of children.  Keeping certain content away from children is a responsibility I take seriously every day.  Censorship and banning of books are something I completely disagree with.  They all have a right to exist, and I have a right to choose whether or not I read it, or whether or not I agree with it.  This book is the reason I teach this literature class in my home school co op.  It is the inspiration behind it.  

Dr. Duke Pesta, a professor of Literature, writer, speaker, radio/tv host, and director of Freedom Project Academy, has said that in some of the literature classes he has taught to college students sometimes none of the students have ever read any of the classic literature.  This is disturbing to me.  I will admit classic literature was something I struggled with in High School, but Great Expectations and Crime and Punishment sparked something in me that had me thinking, and I've never stopped.  Although I did not understand everything going on in those books at the time, I have been inspired many times to go back and re read or listen to them.  I have listened to many more in recent years and I've never been disappointed by my learning from them.  

If you ever want to know what you believe, go write about it.  Just start writing your thoughts about any subject or idea.  Ponder on it, and keep writing, and then read books, lots of books.  Read as many books as you can and then write about them.  I promise you will figure out what you believe, and you will expand your logic and knowledge in doing so.  

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."-Ray Bradbury