Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fahrenheit 451
Book Review: A Great Piece of Literature
Summary: 4 Stars
Ray Bradbury does an amazing job at creating a wonderful tale. Reading this as a 14 year old, I think it we be much more enjoyed by an older crowd. It is a great book. It is very interesting in my opinion how one can completely turn around all his beliefs so quickly... a wonderful story for everyone above the age of 8.Book Review: A Great Summer Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a book that will make you think. As you are reading this book, questions pop up that you would have probably never thought of. Set in the not so distant future, Bradbury plunges you into the life of Guy Montag. He is a fireman who was always taught to ask how, not why. His job is to burn, not put out flames, never asking the reasons behind the burnings. He goes through life happy, not knowing anything is wrong. He lives in an unperfected utopia. Due to one event, his whole mentality crumbles and chaos emerges as he goes through a transformation, making everyone around him his enemy, except the few people who have gone through this metamorphosis. No longer ignorant he becomes isolated, pushing for some way out.
This book is probably one of the best books I have ever read; it might even be my favorite. If you like books such as The Giver, or the short story Harrison Bergeron, then this is definitely a book to read.
Book Review: A Great Surprise
Summary: 5 Stars
Because of the current usage of terms taken from classic dystopian novels - Big Brother, Fahrenheit 9/11, etc - I had stayed away from such novels. I wasn't interested in what I thought would be whiny books about the government and the authority.
Thank God, I was wrong.
*Fahrenheit 451* is a true masterpiece. Known as science-fiction, it's much more, because the world Bradbury depicts shares some striking similarities with ours, and, considering the time Bradbury wrote it, one can only bow to his sense of foresight.
*fahrenheit 451* is somewhere between *1984* and *Brave New World*. It combines elements from both dystopias and does something very clever with it. Instead of having a dystopia imposed from the top down, Bradbury creates a more subtle world with shades of grey. The result is a much more believable universe, which we can already recognise in our very own, current world. And that's the freaky part.
The writing per se is rich, poetic, never pointless, always efficient. Everything counts, not one page for nothing. It has all the elements of a good short story - which it started as - combined with the dimensions of a novel. It's still a relatively short novel, at 200 pages or so, but that doesn't matter one bit. Bradbury's prose is terrific.
I can only recommend this novel to anyone. Whether you're into sci-fi or not seems beside the point with this book; if you like sci-fi, for all the good reasons, then you should love it, and if you don't care about sci-fi, you should still love it. It may even make you appreciate sci-fi if you never did before.
This novel is deep, well-crafted, and philosophical. It's one of those books you feel has truly given you something valuable.
Book Review: A Great, Prophetic Work
Summary: 5 Stars
Ray Bradbury is typically a novelist you read as a child or an adolescent, much like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. For whatever reason, I never read Bradbury as a young man (other than a tiny handful of shorter pieces), and I've only recently decided to correct that omission. I thought I would begin with FAHRENHEIT 451, which is easily Bradbury's most famous work.
Needless to say, this dystopian novel is quite impressive, and not just on the literary merits. What impressed me most was Bradbury's scalding critique of modern-day society, with its ever-shortening attention spans and its addiction to a media that is both ever-present and dumbed-down.
FAHRENHEIT 451 was written way back in 1953, but it holds up beautifully. Many of its lessons are directly applicable to our multimedia age. Contrary to popular perception, this is a not a novel about state censorship, as much as it is a novel about how people willingly give up the power to think and reason for themselves. The books in FAHRENHEIT 451 are burned because the people demand it -- their increasingly rigid and shallow minds (both liberal and conservative) feel threatened by the ideas the books contain.
FAHRENHEIT 451 is a short novel, one that lacks the literary style of a Margaret Atwood or even an Aldous Huxley. But it conveys its message quite powerfully, and it also success very well as a work of suspense. Not only is this book thought provoking, but it's exciting to read.
It's rare when a "classic" novel exceeds my expectations, but FAHRENHEIT 451 by Bradbury accomplishes that feat. Based on my success with this book, I plan to read more of his work very soon.
Book Review: A Highly Intellectual Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Constructed in a more modern and futuristic society, Fahrenheit 451 is a book in which future firemen actually burn the books, apparently for the "bettering" of the book's society. Most people say that this book is about cesorship. But if you dive behind the printed text, you will see the true meaning behind this book. Bradbury satirizes [in this book] what our society is slowly becomig through our own intellectualism(s). And that has been my thesis statement for the three papers I have written on this book: "This book satyrizes what modern society is slowly becomming; as such then we can conclude that [through the socratic definition of justice] that our world is slowly becomming unjust. All in all this is the best book I have ever read. It will enlighten a true reader. Please, for the sake of all great literature, please read this book. I am a highschool freshmen, and I found it exciting enough to do a fifty two page paper on. Please, give Bradbury a chance. The book also goes along with "The Allegory of the Cave" found in chapter three of Plato's "The Rebublic"."Fire is clean and fire is bright."