Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Now to the fiction of Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (in German Fahrenheit 451) I read it in English where it contained 145 pages. Girls and boys 15 to death, originally published 1953.
A little girl is about to change Guy Montag's life forever. Married, seemingly happy and with a secure job in a society in which fun is the most important thing ever, Clarisse makes him doubt everything by simply talking. And listening. And paying attention, to him and to the people around him, to the nature. And Montag begins to see how shallow everything is: His marriage to a wife who listens to palor walls and the radio only, his happiness and, most of all, his job. When a woman dies for a stack of paper, Montag begins to doubt: What is written in these things of paper and ink, that people would give their lives for it? Why are they forbidden in the first place? And can he be as happy as Clarisse and her family if he starts reading himself? But books are dangerous. And when his fellow workers find out about Montag's books, he has to run for his life...
Fahrenheit 451 is a really tense and interesting book. Seriously. I began reading in the English Lesson (we were supposed to begin) and I didn't stop (even though we were supposed to). It made me hold my breath from the very first sentence on. The basic idea behind it is a question: what if a society gets so focussed on entertainment and modern media that it forgets itself? And the answer, this simulation, is extra-ordinarily well executed.
We get to understand the society through its personifications, Millie and her friends. Through their “talking things” you find out so much about the world they live in. This “best program ever” and they can't even remember what it's about. The war. How they each told their husbands that they'd simply remarry if they died, because anything else would just be stupid. How the votes are staged, with the good looking, noble sounding, beaming “right” candidate and the stuttering “wrong” one with the social skills of a cactus. How they even ask “Whom did you vote?” - “The right one, of course!” Imagine something like this.
The counter part to these empty women and their world view are Prof. Faber, Clarisse and, well, her family, even though you don't actually meet them. Clarisse has to go to the psychologist because she asks question why. She's the most rebellious, because she copies her uncle. The uncle who was arrested twice: Once for driving slowly and the second time for being a pedestrian. By the way, there is no love relationship between her and Montag, just in case you wonder.
Through Prof. Faber is the coward – as he says himself – but also a help to Montag and gives hints to how it started.
Montag himself is the bridge between both worlds: The one of books, the world he wants and tries to understand and the one of entertainment, the world he once lived in and rebelled sub-consciously against, even before he met Clarisse. He's a very interesting character, not half as flat as you might think at first. He has many sides which he hides... even from himself. He met Clarisse when he walked home. He refuses to buy the fourth parlour wall. He stole books long before he really got curious enough to read them.
The firemen are interesting as well, especially captain Beatty. I think he's like Montag: He can't really be happy here in this world, but he doesn't find what he needs in books – or he does and simply doesn't want Montag to realise how unhappy he really is. But I personally think that Beatty wanted to die because he couldn't find happiness. That he actually understood books. Because he doesn't condemn Montag, but explains thinks to him. He visited him, when he was ill. He's far more perceptive then his wife, who only listens to her sea shell radio.
As you can see, this book is fascinating. It's the general theme and all the details about the world which I liked best. The why and all the day-to-day-things that are actually never really important, only mentioned in half a sentence or something. This way, the world seems more realistic, almost touchable. The reader can understand the world without a real explanation from narrator / someone else which would pull the reader out of the plot line and remind him that it's fiction. Very, very well done.
Additionally, I like how the narration changes when f.e. Montag sits in that train with Denham's Dentrifice and the lilies. And the ending, which is not happy, but leaves room for hope. The way Montag and his group decide to go is very sensible.
I give stars for the style, the characters, the ideas, the content and the extraordinarily way the ideas were woven into the story. I give the last star for the end of the book and the fact that this novel can change someone's world view – and view on books.