Book of the Week #6: Fahrenheit 451

In this week’s book of the week, I took a little bit of inspiration, once again from John Green. John Green started the Nerdfighter book club, where we would all read the same book. He then gave us some directions to read the first part of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, so we could discuss. I decided to do that, given that I hadn’t yet picked a book for this week (Let’s Pretend this Never Happened is on the list for next week!). However, when I started to read it, determined to stop at part 1, so I wouldn’t ruin the book club party, I realized that my eBook version was only 106 pages long, and plowed through clear to the end. For some reason I always pictured it being longer…but it was not.

The book is divided into 3 parts. Being only a hundred or so pages long, you can imagine that these parts are not terribly verbose. The first section is called The Hearth and the Salamander. In this section, we meet the protagonist, Guy Montag. He is a fireman. However, this being dystopian fiction, a fireman is one who sets fires, not one who stops them. In this future, books are banned, and it is his job to burn all the books they find. This section goes into depth talking about the rationale (or lack thereof) in the banning of books. Over the next two parts, The Sieve and the Sand and Burning Bright, Guy begins to read books that he usually is charged with burning, and begins to question the authority that has told the people that books are a malevolent thing.

Having finished this book, I definitely feel that its status as a classic novel is somewhat deserved. IT says a lot about censorship, the lack of coherent truth, and even about drug use.  I know that at many high schools, it is required reading, but at mine it was not. After reading this, I think that I’m glad that it wasn’t required, not because it wasn’t good, but because I hated all of the novels we had to read, simply because we beat them to death, pulling symbolism out of thin air. I feel like this book greatly benefits from not being picked apart so much, even though I’m sure countless people have done just that. For that reason, if your high school did make you hate this book, pick it up, read it again, and see if your opinion has changed. I’d say that it’s a good 7/10.