Book Review

Fahrenheit 451 is about a fireman named Guy Montag whose job is to start fires. The story takes place in a world where books are illegal and if said books are discovered, they'll be burned to ashes. Guy Montag has done his job without the least bit suspicion until one day he met a 17-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan.  Clarisse and her family is different from everyone else in this world where the story unfolds and her outgoing personality sparks an interest in Guy's mind. After meeting Clarisse, if you'll notice, Guy starts to question things around him. For example Guy asked, "Was- was it always like this?" (Bradbury, 34) a little after Clarisse told him that her uncle said that firemen use to put out fires instead of starting them. After Clarisse allegedly died, Guy started going into a panicked state, making a rationalization about the way society is in his world. Guy starts to read books that he had been hiding and collecting and tries to avoid being caught.

In my opinion, I think that Fahrenheit 451 is a very good novel because it has an original plot and conflict, the main character is well written, and the figurative language used triggers a lot of imagery in my mind. The diction was something that I needed to get use to and at certain points of the story, a more advanced set of vocabulary words were used. I was okay with this since I like a challenge. Fahrenheit 451 would most likely fit into the category of dystopian fiction, similar to Lord of the Flies, The Giver, and Harrison Bergeron. Guy Montag was written very well in my opinion because he starts out in the similar position as all of the people in this world where everyone's mind set was very similar, books are illegal and no one questions as to why firemen start fires. Guy then sees that books can be a source to finding answers and stashes away a collection of books. He starts to read these books and learn things that he has never known before. Sadly, knowing is half the journey. He seems to lose his mind on the way to finding the truth.

When I first started reading Fahrenheit 451, I immediately connected it to Harrison Bergeron and Catcher and the Rye. The reason why I connected it to Harrison Bergeron is because the characters are similar, Guy reminds me of George and Mildred (Guy's wife) reminds me of Hazel. Guy starts to question why firemen started fires and why books were illegal and George started to question why in his world, they put handicaps on talents people in order to make everyone in their society "equal."Mildred is half-witted and moronic, similar to that of Hazel. Mildred thinks that the people on television are her 'family' and doesn't remember that she drank a whole bottle of sleeping pills and about how Clarisse had died 4 days ago. Hazel doesn't have a good memory and repeated her recent comment when replied with, "You can say that again." Another similarity I saw between all of these texts was the idea of conformity. In all of these pieces of literature, the law or the world is trying to make everyone equal or make them act/think a certain way. In the end, is everything really equal?