Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a futuristic dystopian society where a fireman, Guy Montag, questions what he has been told his entire life. The novel begins when Guy, more commonly referred to as Montag, leaves the fire station late at night. Montag is a fireman; however, in this novel, firemen are portrayed as men who start fires rather than put them out. While walking home, Montag runs into a young girl named Clarisse who is very out of the ordinary. They begin to have a conversation about Montag’s job, which consists of burning the books that are forbidden in the society they live in. Montag and Clarisse begin to have daily conversations but one day Clarisse simply disappears, and this causes Montag to question his beliefs.

Montag somehow smuggles a great deal of books into his home and hides them since he and all other people are banned from having books in their possession. Eventually, Mildred Montag, Guy’s wife, locates her husband’s stash of books in their home and becomes frantic. Montag promises that he will not get caught. However his boss at the fire station, Beatty, discovers his books also. Beatty tells Montag to get rid of the books in a certain amount of time but when Montag does not follow order, Beatty attempts to make Montag burn down his own home. Montag then turns on Beatty and burns him instead.

Montag attempts and succeeds to escape from his town. He then meets with a group of renegades known as the Book People. Montag joins their group and one day while they are traveling, they see Montag’s old hometown get destroyed by jets dropping bombs. The Book People go to the city and help the survivors rebuild their society, which was now in ruins.

Theme:

The theme of Fahrenheit 451 is that when you rebe...

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...ality of gathering.

Genre:

The main genre of Fahrenheit 451 is science fiction. Science fiction is “a form of fantasy in which scientific facts, assumptions, or hypotheses from the basis, by logical extrapolation, of adventures in the future, on other planets, in other dimensions in time or space, or under new variants of scientific law” (Harmon 468). Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction novel because Bradbury is basing the novel on the fact that in some sort of dystopian futuristic society books will be banned and if you are caught owning books; your home must be burned.

Fahrenheit 451 can be grouped in the subgenre ‘problem.’ I believe that the novel can be categorizes as such because one of the main interests is Montag’s goal to legalize books again and bring back the ability for the society to become independent people and gain knowledge at their own will.

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