Ray Bradbury was thinking of naming his famous novel “Fahrenheit 270”. His friends opted for “Fahrenheit 205” instead. After a fruitless sequence of telephone calls by Bradbury to several university physics and chemistry departments, a single call to the Los Angeles Fire Department revealed the book-paper combustion point to 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
Welcome to “Yapping about Fahrenheit 451 by Shukanya Prachi”. As a fairly novice reader to English classics, I will try to draw links and analyse my vantage point towards this short but compelling novel.
I might be tempted to brand Bradbury’s literature as “Orwellian” and “dystopian”. It is true that Eric Blair’s (better known as George Orwell) 1949 book “Nineteen Eighty-Four” had influenced a generation of writers and continues to do so. As John Rodden concludes in his book “Becoming George Orwell” – “Orwell is every intellectual’s Big Brother”. It is remarkable that Orwell’s entire fame depended solely on the last two years of his life. He died six months after the publication of his pivotal novel.
He had produced a set of “classical” novels in his early days of penmanship, such as “Burmese Days”, “A Clergyman’s Daughter”, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” and “Coming Up for Air”. Although strongly original and witty, these novels failed to encapsulate the “Orwell” as we know today. Here he was Eric Blair, a former police officer posted at Burma (present Myanmar) who got sick of the British Imperial Service and decided to become a writer. “ I want to be a FAMOUS writer,” he wrote to a childhood sweetheart. In his famous essay “Why I write”, he also confesses that his literary venture is based on “sheer egoism, the desire to be remembered after death.”
He was a leftist, yet he was slammed away both ways- he did not believe in the Stalinist agenda of absolute dictatorship. He was living in the pre-cold war age when America was still in love with “Uncle Joe” (Joseph Stalin) and our “little Soviet siblings”. Orwell liked to go on adventures and he was a BBC employee- so he was heavily involved and infuriated by the politics of his day. Interestingly, his image of a “Democratic Socialist” led him to be revered by Catholic journals such as “Commonweal”. They advertised him to be a “man of Christian principles”- ignoring the fact Orwell hated the idea of collective religion with all his might.
“Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” came out right when America’s cordial bonds with the USSR was starting to wear away. The timing could not be better. Previously in 1945, when “Animal Farm” (subtitled as A fairy story to keep the tone down) was published, it did not appeal to the general public save intellectual circles in the Western world. At best it was nominated for “Book of the year” by clubs around America. However, the 1954 BBC adaptation of “1984” sent Orwell’s posthumous fame catapulting towards the sky. Suddenly he became a household name, his last two novels were intensely studied and became high-school English textbooks. But above all, he became America’s siege against Soviet Union. If Eric Blair was alive, he would have protested against the blithe usage of his ideas, but as the saying goes “A dead man can’t say anything”.
Now, what are the common grounds we have between Orwell and Bradbury’s novels? Both “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Fahrenheit 451” explore societies in the distant future which suppress freedom of speech and thought. Except the heroes of the two men- Winston Smith and Guy Montag, the rest of the society seems to have made a pact with living a life robbed of willpower.
Ray Bradbury transformed his novella “The Fireman” into “Fahrenheit 451”. The firemen are the agents of a regime designed to destroy intelligence in the human species, although it is unclear why so. Their task is simple, “Raise the alarm, Burn ‘em out, Come back”. Of course, their target is books and their owners.
Guy Montag was just another fireman until he encounters a pale girl named Clarisse McCellan. She introduces herself under the moonlight as “seventeen and weird, my uncle always told me to say so”. She opens his eyes with her innocently penetrating questions and remarks about people.
“Is it true that long ago firemen put out fires instead of going out to start them?…..Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”
For the first night of his life, Montag actually questions if he is happy. When he goes to burn a house after this meeting, he encounters a woman who would rather cling to her books and die on spot rather than leaving them alone. Her fiery determination is intimidating to him and even to the captain of the firemen squad.
He guiltily steals a book from this mission and adds it to his secret stash of literature hidden behind a ventilator. What is in a book that makes a woman burn with them? He poses the question to his wife Millie once he gets home, but she is too engrossed in her “seashell radio” and imaginary “the Family” TV shows that the state curated to keep people indulged in foolishness. She overdoses on pills that night, completely oblivious of what happened the next morning.
The opening scene can also be paralleled with Winston Smith’s first act of defiance against Big Brother, when the hero of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” purchases a real, leather bound diary from the black market. He is also guilty when “In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984”. But it is the guilt that sets him out on a dangerous journey to search for the truth.
Guy Montag feels completely alone on his quest to find out why books are important, and why we must save them. Montag’s loneliness becomes a key part of his character development. Mildred’s apathy and her shallow distractions are in stark contrast to his hunger for truth. His fear of Captain Beatty represents his growing sense of danger in his adventure, as he starts to see the regime’s power more clearly. Beatty himself is a well-read man and he is capable of psychologically manipulating Montag into the system again, using quotes from books to his advantage.
With Clarisse supposedly dead, Montag seeks out Faber, an old man he met in a park ages ago. He seeks help from the retired English professor to infiltrate the regime by planting books in other firemen’s houses. This will raise the alarm and there will be no one else left to enforce the laws. The far-fetched and vague idea soon proves to be fateful when Montag’s own wife hands him in and his house is burnt to ashes. He is on the run.
Thankfully, he escapes to the other side of the city by swimming across the river. He is taken up by the “outcasts”, other men and women who work to recreate the free world again. He realises although the books themselves are lost, their blueprints remain in human memories. They watch as the city he has left behind detonates itself in a fake attempt to prove war, and sets out towards an unknown future.
The language Ray Bradbury uses is poetic, bordering the edge of vague. He mentions technologies and mechanisms only briefly, focusing on their symbolic not direct meaning in the novel. The state’s entertainment systems, namely the wall-sized televisions, white clowns, beetle-sized radios and driving fast cars are only mentioned briefly. This lack of detail helps keep the focus on social and human critique. The fleeting thoughts of his hero is an important aspect, as it depicts the unsettling setting of the city of the firemen. He shares metaphors with Orwell while has his own original stack. For example, Montag’s personal fear is the “Hound”, a metallic spider-like automation designed to hunt down its target to anywhere. Towards the end of the novel, his almost-demise is designed with the Hound itself. Winston Smith’s mention of his fear of rats leads him to the same torture in room 101. It illustrates the manipulation of human fears by totalitarian regimes.
Bradbury’s choice of fire as a metaphor is also interesting. For fire is the symbol of destruction and also the light of knowledge. Before meeting Clarisse, Montag was ignorant of the system and how it manipulated his life, and he starts hating his job as a fireman. Again, he uses fire to burn out traces of his presence from Faber’s house before his escape, which takes on a meaning of liberation rather than oppression.
George Orwell’s style, in contrast, is bleak and direct. He is one of the rare writers of English literature who can command the reader’s absolute attention with a highly serious tone usage. In “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, the “Telescreen” is depicted as the main instrument of surveillance in Big Brother’s rule, and plays a deciding role in the outcome of Winston and his lover Julia. Although in a seemingly advanced time period, not many other machines are described in the year 1984. Which poses the question- if the residents of Oceania had no access to quality lifestyle, how did the state afford to install expensive telescreens in every house? Orwell skirts from this question by providing an explanation of underground cable networks. This dilemma is further explored in Peter Huber’s “Orwell’s Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest”.
Therefore, we can come to deduce that both writers esteem technological details to be non-cohesive to the storyline, and put their focus elsewhere. It is the reason why none of the novels can be labelled as “science fiction”, although they share a lot of characteristics with prominent writers of the genre, especially H.G. Wells.
Orwell’s telescreens are more than just surveillance tools—they represent the constant invasion of privacy and the erasure of personal autonomy. Bradbury’s fire is not just destructive, but also a purifying force, illustrating knowledge’s potential to spark both danger and enlightenment.
However, Orwell and Bradbury’s models of “dystopia” are a bit different from each other. The sheer volume of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” allows the author to explore more dimensions of power in its pages. “Fahrenheit 451” is comparatively much of a rough sketch of ideas.
Guy Montag and Winston Smith both gather comrades to fuel their journey, but their relationships are much more nuanced in the latter. The meeting of Winston and Julia is quite like Romeo and Juliet, destined to be “Star-crossed Lovers”. The relationship between Montag and Millie is not clearly defined. As he reaches over to the river, Montag remarks “I wouldn’t cry even if she died” then proceeds to feel concerned for her when the city detonates itself in the distance. Did he still care for her despite his constant apathy? Did he care about the sudden fact that they met in Chicago a “long time ago”? As Bradbury explored humane themes in his novel, this is something he could expand on.
Orwell poignantly uses the theme of betrayal in his characters. Winston trusted O’Brien, who played a game of fake trust with him. “We shall meet where there is no darkness”- it is under the blinding white lights of room 101 where Winston finally understands what he meant. Although he believed he had loved Julia more than anything, the sight of uncaged rats in the torture cell makes him scream “Do it to Julia, not me! Do it to Julia!”
Or take the scene after both of them are released from the ministry.
“I betrayed you,” she said baldly.
“I betrayed you,” he said.
Through the usage of simple words, the author illustrates how the regime breaks a person to the point of failing the only person they thought they would not. The reader feels disturbed by the strong imagery and is able to grasp Orwell’s thought process.
Bradbury’s characters are much more open-ended, and can be attributed to differing conclusions about their personalities. It is possible he decidedly left gaps for the reader to construct their own meaning. Again, his dystopian city directly discourages meaningful personal relationships. Bradbury’s system exalts control not through surveillance but through indulgence. “Fahrenheit 451” is more of a warning bell towards the dependence on technology- whereas “Nineteen Eighty-Four“ is a direct critique of limiting personal freedom.
Montag’s helping mates stay true to him up until the end. They are willing to risk their lives for a bigger cause. The novel ends with an almost hopeful tone, and Montag is optimistic now that he had found a place where he finally belongs to. He does not have a clear plan yet, but we can judge the process of rebuilding the society might take anywhere from a couple to a hundred years by the outcasts. Now the job is to make the “drugged” people aware of the fact that their lives are being controlled by the state, wielding the destructive fire to Montag’s advantage and turn it to the flame of knowledge.
Although Orwell ends his novel with a bleak future where Winston “Loves Big Brother”, there is still hope to the reader that the rebellion may rise to overthrow the (hopefully) temporary state of absolute totalitarianism.
To conclude, “Fahrenheit 451” holds genuine merit and provokes any person with thought to assess the current state of their world. It is endlessly quoted in times of unrest, and alongside “Nineteen Eighty-four” they remain as crown jewels of English dystopian literature. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, which has compelled me to analyse the significance of freedom once again.
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