Ray Bradbury

'Fahrenheit 451' ist die Temperatur, bei der "Bücherpapier Feuer fängt und verbrennt". In Ray Bradburys Zukunftsvision ist die Feuerwehr nicht mehr mit Wasserspritzen ausgerüstet, sondern mit Flammenwerfern, die genau diesen Hitzegrad erzeugen, um die letzten Zeugnisse individualistischen Denkens - die Bücher - zu vernichten. Da -beginnt der Feuerwehrmann Guy Montag, sich Fragen zu stellen... Die beängstigende Geschichte von einer Welt, in der das Bücherlesen mit Gefängnis und Tod bestraft wird, ist ein zeitloses Plädoyer für das freie Denken.

Fahrenheit 451

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

Huiying 

Cram them full of non-combustible 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. That way lies melancholy.

Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.

Danny White

He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.

film → television → YouTube → TikTok

Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.

Angelica Garcia 

Caitlin

Photine

Elina Berzina

vivian mizuno

The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the source of all discord and unhappiness, the printed book.

Prashanth Srivatsa

Bradbury's imagination is terrific. He wholly succeeds in making us disturbed and frightened of how evolving technology and a lessening attention span is causing us to not only move away but also discard the learnings of literature as irrelevant. This kind of presience and human understanding is rare.

Nast Marrero

Twin brother of The Martian Chronicles. Bradbury crafts a thrilling distopia that becomes closer by the day.

Jordan Peet

Fahrenheit 451 was a good book. It builds up the action after each part. In my opinion, the first part was the worst. It was confusing and you really had to pay attention to understand what was going on. The second part was better. It had more action and it just appealed to me more. The third part, in my opinion, was the best. You can understand what was going on and you could feel what Montag felt.

Ali 🐝

Nicolás Niño 

Ray Bradbury consigue hacernos ver como la sociedad necesita de la literatura y la cultura. Sin ella, nos quedamos sin nuestra identidad propia, la identidad propia de los seres humanos. 

El mejor ejemplo de lo que Bradbury ilustra en su novela lo podemos observar hoy en día: la novela sobrevive al paso del tiempo y, a cada año que pasa, se vuelve más vital su lectura. "Fahrenheit 451" parece cada día más un espejo en el que mirarnos y menos una obra de ciencia ficción. 

El final es simple pero efectivo: ¿Hay alguna esperanza en el ser humano en la sociedad de "Fahrenheit 451"? Cada lector asimilará el final de una manera distinta. Una obra para releer y estudiar.

Fahrenheit 451: la temperatura a la que el papel se enciende y arde. Guy Montag es un bombero y el trabajo de un bombero es quemar libros, que están prohibidos porque son causa de discordia y sufrimiento. El Sabueso Mecánico del Departamento de Incendios, armado con una letal inyección hipodérmica, escoltado por helicópteros, está preparado para rastrear a los disidentes que aún conservan y leen libros. Como 1984, de George Orwell, como Un mundo feliz, de Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 describe una civilización occidental esclavizada por los medios, los tranquilizantes y el conformismo. La visión de Bradbury es asombrosamente profética: pantallas de televisión que ocupan paredes y exhiben folletines interactivos; avenidas donde los coches corren a 150 kilómetros por hora persiguiendo a peatones; una población que no escucha otra cosa que una insípida corriente de música y noticias transmitidas por unos diminutos auriculares insertados en las orejas. «Fahrenheit 451 es el más convincente de todos los infiernos conformistas.» Kingsley Amis. La novela más célebre de Ray Bradbury, una historia de un sombrío y horroroso futuro.

Stefanie Viens

Maybe I have a weird taste in books, but I wasn't too thrilled with this classic. Possibly because I'd heard about it for so long that I began anticipating a certain feel to it and found that it wasn't accurate. It seemed to me like the book was a lot of whining and indecision on the part of the main character. I like characters with strong personalities, and he just didn't cut it for me.

Rachel Kanyid

I finally read a classic! And I loved it! I can definitely see why this book has been considered so important in the literature world.

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, suddenly realizes their merit.

A Novel

megan kelley

pretty fire but didn’t reach as high as 451 degrees for me though.

neko

Well... this is a book that has not aged well.

Or maybe I've just outgrown its particular flavor of book-nerd wish fulfillment. TV rots the brain! Reading books is important for civilized society! People who read books are better than people who don't: they have richer interior lives, they question, they really see the world around them! Being plugged in all the time = bad! Kids these days, driving cars too fast and shooting each other!

On the whole it reads to me now like conservative pearl-clutching about how We Have Too Much Technology and We Should Return To A Simpler Time and stuff like that. Personally, my suspicion is that even before TV and the internet, there were plenty of people who were shallow and didn't lead rich interior lives and didn't engage critically with the world around them. And probably also plenty of people who saw this as the decline of civilization.

But even so, I do like some of the writing. No one can deny Bradbury wields a mean metaphor.



Addendum: I could do without Bradbury's ridiculous 1979 screed, included as an addendum with the Kindle edition, that more openly gets at something the novel more covertly hints at. He describes women who wonder why he has so few female characters as "idiots" and rails against over-sensitive politically-correct "minorities" trying to censor him and meddle with his aesthetics (basically book-burners themselves, he outright states).

I'm willing to forgive the original text for being a product of its time, but the 1979 doubling-down does my opinion of Bradbury no favors.

Felipe Saldarriaga 

Una lectura sumamente recomendada, se posiciona en mi favorito del año y seguramente de los que más recomendaré en mi total de experiencias transformadoras de la lectura <3

Vivian

Now I’m convinced that American modern classics published around the 50s are simply not my cup of tea. Will avoid going forward.

With that said, Fahrenheit 451 isn’t without its merits. The writing seriously bored me to death, but maybe it’s just the dystopian tone. Creepy, disoriented, messy. The bleak future society Bradbury built is ambiguous, hard to decipher. Is it about censorship, mind control, humanity? You can’t be sure. Readers find whatever worries and scares them in this story, and that’s what makes it timeless.

David Foster Wallace once said, “Good fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” In this way Fahrenheit 451 fulfilled its purpose.

Fahrenheit 451 ofrece la historia de un sombrío y horroroso futuro. Montag, el protagonista, pertenece a una extraña brigada de bomberos cuya misión, paradójicamente, no es la de sofocar incendios sino la de provocarlos para quemar libros. Porque en el país de Montag está terminantemente prohibido leer. Porque leer obliga a pensar, y en el país de Montag está prohibido pensar. Porque leer impide ser ingenuamente feliz, y en el país de Montag hay que ser feliz a la fuerza... La novela más célebre de Ray Bradbury, maestro de la ficción científica.

Fahrenheit cuatrocientos cincuenta y uno

Haylie

I thought it started out kinda blah, but then gradually became great.

Rito Ghosh

One of the best books I have ever read.

I am not going to write a long review.

I remember two scenes particularly.

One, when Montag opens his mouth and the flying jets do the screaming for him.

Two, when, a book is burning, its visual similarities with a pigeon and its unfolded wings.

Ray Bradbury has exceptional and powerful capability of creating a meaningful scene. A dramatic scene.

Not only for the scenes I shall remember this book, I also have to remember it for its philosophical and creative value.

The concept of men becoming books and the layer of meaning it hides is of a tremendous value from all creative, dramatic and philosophical perspectives.

Wenny

A beautiful, if not poignant love letter to curious minds. It tells the story of a possible future where people would rather live in oblivion than facing to question, to face the aspects of life and to acknowledge that the dark side is too part of life. It is unnervingly relevant in this age where distractions and echo chambers are aplenty.

Grace M

A science fiction book that narrates the story of a futuristic society where all books are banished and firefighters are assigned the job of burning the books and the house or building that contains the books rather than putting out fires.

Rachel Evans

(3.75/5) 1 hour 45 minutes - A very reflective and speculative dystopia I read in attempt to read more 'classic' books. I really liked the characters and plot, even if both were written in a confusing way at times. One of my favourite scenes was Beatty's speech about the purpose of burning books - it is one of the greatest passages I think I have ever read. Some of the book is written in a way that is intentionally vague but I just found it hard to understand what was going on at these times. However, overall, this was a very good book deserving of its status in today's view of literature.

The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen.

Tilde C

In hindsight isn't it kinda weird there were absolutely no women remembering books? Women who have been storytellers since time immemorial?

Fahrenheit 451: A Novel

Bradbury does get a little preachy at times, but I think he's earned the right. The prose is electrifying, and the plot riveting.

Jamie

For use in schools and libraries only. A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit, in a chilling novel of a frightening near-future world.

It didn’t inspire me and the ending was too abrupt. Also, some of the events in the book were to cliche for my taste. I was expecting a more original story. 

Fatih Arslan

Mary Garza

3.5 
Siento que me acaban de cortar la historia abruptamente y no agrada tener esa sensación.

Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...

The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning...along with the houses in which they were hidden.

Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames...never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.

Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think...and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!
--back cover

Kirsten Simkiss

I feel like this book deserves more 2.5 stars than 3, but I feel better leaning toward 2 stars than 3.

I honestly have to say that I don't see the appeal of the book and I didn't really enjoy reading it. The characters are poorly developed. You know very little of their lives barring what happens to them in those moments and you learn very little of them through the pages, aside from Montag, the main character. The setting is odd and illogical. For instance, the seeming lack of speed limits or the complete lack of the fear of death is simply seen as ordinary for no apparent reason. There's this sort of feeling of anarchy, despite the fact that the government is there with strange guidelines regarding books. Really, there seems to be no law regarding much of anything else aside from books. Many appear to think this book is a discussion about the government, but I'd argue it's a discussion on the importance of literature in the world and how a lack of such things would bring about the end of society as we know it.

As always, the writing style and the haunting feeling lingering behind the words is something Ray Bradbury has always done so very well. I think this book particularly is meant to haunt you, even if it does seem far fetched.

I assume the warning to future is what made this a classic book. Certainly, it isn't a book I would have chosen to make a classic. Most of my high school classmates had to read the book for their English classes. I feel it's a strong argument to children as a warning to the future, that books and the learning that they teach are important - that they cannot simply be replaced by movies and film. I also know that this book was written for another generation, 63 years in the past. Perhaps this book helped them to avert that future. Perhaps that future would never have come to pass. Perhaps I believe too much in the sympathetic nature of people to ever believe this could happen.

Ofelia

«La Fenice» disse.
«Che cosa?»
«C'era un buffissimo uccello, chiamato Fenice, nel più remoto passato, prima di Cristo, e questo uccello ogni quattro o cinquecento anni si costruiva una pira e ci s'immolava sopra. Ma ogni volta che vi si bruciava, rinasceva subito poi dalle sue stesse ceneri, per ricominciare. E a quanto sembra, noi esseri umani non sappiamo fare altro che la stessa cosa, infinite volte, ma abbiamo una cosa che la Fenice non ebbe mai. 
Sappiamo la colossale sciocchezza che abbiamo appena fatta. Conosciamo bene tutte le innumerevoli assurdità commesse in migliaia di anni e finché sapremo di averle commesse e ci sforzeremo di saperlo, un giorno o l'altro la smetteremo di accendere i nostri fetenti roghi funebri e di saltarci sopra.
Ad ogni generazione, raccogliamo un numero sempre maggiore di gente che si ricorda.»

Drew Dost

I found it to be very thought-provoking and provided an interesting view on modern society. There are so many parallels to real life that it's very intriguing, especially if you like analyzing the meaning behind books. The writing itself is so intricately woven in a way that if you analyze a single sentence there are many smaller things to pick up on within it, but it's not written in a way that requires such detailed reading to understand it. It's the type of book where however much effort you put into reading it reflects ow much value you'll get out of it.

Fahrenheit 451

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