Fahrenheit 451 / Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451

category: science fiction, author:

Ray Bradbury

original copyright 1953

read in April 2012

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10: well worth reading

For those who came in late... and perhaps, have been asleep when they could have been reading... Fahrenheit 451 is a story of book burning.

Books -- as we all know -- cause nothing but trouble. They stir up ideas, make people think. Worse yet, books contradict each other; they confuse their readers.

The temperature of the title -- 451 degrees Fahrenheit -- is the temperature at which the pages of a book will start to burn. (For modern readers who wish to take up a book-burning career, that's a fraction under 233 degrees Celsius.)

Bradbury writes in a very poetic style of prose. He is also rather wordy, with characters discussing -- at some length -- deep political and philosophical issues. As far as I can remember, my reasons for avoiding books by Bradbury were based on lack of plot and point rather than on poetic prose and didactic discussion.

Fahrenheit 451, however, is good.

Okay, I'm not sure that I agree with his main point, that a book is an almost magical means of opening the mind to wonder, deep thought and a better society. Perhaps it's because the short quotes he uses are from books that I have never read... Though many of the quotes are very familiar. Perhaps from my readings of Readers' Digest...

I also rather like an alternate view -- the Fahrenheit 451 societal control view -- that book burning could prevent wars. Or, at least, destruction of old books could also destroy memories of old hatreds. Thus encouraging people with short memories to forgive and forget. Or forget and not have to forgive.

Only trouble is... Do you burn all books, or just "trouble-making" books? And who decides which books are trouble-makers? Since I have no answer to those questions... I can't support burning of any books at all. (Though there are some... :-)

So Fahrenheit 451 is a treatise against burning of books.

What I really enjoy, is Bradbury's view of television... Talk about the opiate of the people!

So read the book, appreciate the message, tick off one more classic that you have now read.

Meanwhile:

The opiate of the people

First, I typed "Talk about the opiate of the masses!" Then I thought, was that television? Wasn't it Marx, writing about religion? So I scanned the web.

It seems that Edward R. Murrow -- whoever he was -- referred to television as "the opiate of the people":

"It might be helpful," said Murrow, "if those who control television and radio would sit still for a bit and attempt to discover what it is they care about. If television and radio are to be used to entertain all of the people all of the time, then we have come perilously close to discovering the real opiate of the people. (Time Magazine, 1957)

So that was in 1957. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. Already, television was being recognised as a drug. A means of entertaining all of the people all of the time. A means of forcing universal happiness.

Bradbury's television is, indeed, a universal opiate. A means of enforcing universal acceptance of government control. A mind-numbing drug. But not a means to happiness...

Today's television is pretty much the same... except that it is not a government in control.

Quick! Save your mind! Go out and read a book!

But first...

The opium of the masses

Marx -- Karl, not Groucho -- wrote that religion is the opium of the masses.

Was Murrow right to steal and misquote the Marx attack on religion, to use as an attack on television? Try this:

Television is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against television is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is television.

Television suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Television is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of television as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.

That is the Marx quote -- part of it -- from Wikipedia -- but with the word television replacing the original word, religion.

Doesn't it work rather well?!

..o0o..

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