Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451, a novel about censorship, was written by Ray Bradbury. It was published by Ballantine Books in 1953. A sense for the theme of the book is the quote “Do you ever read any of the books you burn? (Bradbury 8) being that books are outlawed and anyone caught reading them would be incarcerated, and the possibility of arson from your own government.

In the beginning of the book, the main character, Guy Montag is introduced immediately in his place of work, a fireman. This seems like it is not such a big deal at first because the duty of a fireman is to put out the fires, but the irony in it; is that the fireman’s duty in this set time period is to start the fire. As Montag ends the days work and walks home he has an eerie feeling that someone has been following him home or has been waiting for him for the past week and in fact there was someone. Now Clarisse McClellan is introduced, she describes herself as an outcast to society because that is what society has proclaimed her to be, “I’m antisocial,they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it?” (Bradbury 28). However, the norm to her is the outré for the people. Additionally her role influences Montag on questioning why does he do what he does, and that leads to the continuation of the plot. When Montag begins to seriously have doubts on what he does he does the unfavourable thing and reads books causing him to cause trouble for himself, such as the man-hunt for him.
Overall the book itself is a great read because when broken down and closely analyzed it becomes very interesting also you can see how some modern movies/literature is based on it loosely, however on a difficulty scale Fahrenheit 451 is a relatively easy read. My favourite part pf the book is when Montag realizes that he does miss seeing Clarisse everyday and there unique conversations. What I hated and would change is the ending and the death of Clarisse. I just wished that somehow Clarisse would come back later in the book more importantly the end, or that she never died at all.
As a final point, this book gets a high recommendation rank not just because of it’s context but just the simple fact that everyone in their life has to read this at some point in life. In high school your classes will read this and break it down. If not for educational purposes then this would be more for the science fiction type of people.