This book doesn’t feel very compelling to me. The government wants to burn books because they make people unhappy? People only care about silly things and no one thinks about anything? Is that the point of the book. It felt like the ramblings of an old person to me. It reads like “Kids these days”.
And also when the characters quote famous books it just went over my head because I haven’t read the books they’re quoting. So what, I assume, was supposed to be a powerful moment, just turns into meaningless words. I don’t get the Shakespeare references because I haven’t read Shakespeare.
The absurdity of the ‘Family’ and the cars moving so fast that the billboards need to be stretched also felt far fetched. I feel Brave New World did a much better job of exploring this idea. While some things in Brave New World are more unrealistic than Fahrenheit 451, it still felt plausible because of how different that world is from our own (lab made children etc).
When they went to burn Montag’s house, it didn’t surprise me at all. I saw it coming as early as when he went to Faber’s house. I knew their plan of planting books in Firemen’s houses wouldn’t work at all. Compare this to 1984, where the author gives us some real hope before snatching it away in the end.
And near the end I got bored of reading ‘Man touches grass’. I guess I liked the positive ending though.
by ChellJ0hns0n
1 Comment
At the risk of me not picking up on the irony of this post, I’d say you’re probably the product of what Bradbury was concerned about.