Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Fahrenheit 451

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

65 reviews

angorarabbit's review against another edition

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challenging dark inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

TLDR: Beautiful writing style, thought provoking ideas.

Context: Teenager me tried to read a Bradbury short story collection but my mind was too jittery to appreciate well written prose and I was too impatient for short stories. That is a loss I will try to make up for.

A good novel lives rent free in your mind long after it is placed back on the shelf or returned to the library. For a great novel you are happy to give it the room. Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books. Rather than glow about Mr Bradbury’s work I’d like to leave my thoughts on two things.

First; Beatty is explaining to Montag why books are not only not needed but harmful to their society. “Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White People don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it.” In an afterword Mr Bradbury also writes that minorities and women play a part in censoring and banning books.

While women and minorities do add their voices to calls against books I do not think that they are the reason why books such as Little Black Sambo (LBS) are discarded. Rather, I would argue that it is the trend in books that changed. Even in the 60’s LBS was thought of as old fashioned, something your grandparents had laying around. We had Dr Seuss, and Maurice Sendak for goodness sake. Why would we want to read and look at pictures as old hat as LBC? LBC was as square as Aesop’s fables.

If women could rewrite books surely there would be a leading role for a few females in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for a start. Foundation doesn’t have a single female, minority, or lgbtqaa+ character as far as I recall, yet has it been rewritten? No because the majority see no need.

Second: The wall to wall televisions block out the leaves and the Seashells block out the crickets in the night. Books can open your eyes or blind you to reality. They can enhance or block you thinking for yourself just as much if you let them. The trick is to read what will enhance and to live in the real world. If I had to memorise one book to save it from the book burners it would be Fahlrenheit 451 and not the bible.

Again thank you to libraries and librarians who despite the gun bearing Redoubt continue to bring banned books to our eyes.

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ebp's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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rumroza's review against another edition

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challenging informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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celery's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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kajasversion's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

i agree with everything Sideria said so i’ll just leave this here: “Besides that it also describes a future of degenerating and increasingly faster entertainment. Entertainment that doesn't ask hard questions. And in that it often managed to predict some bad current tendencies in 21st century media. 30sec short form video bombardement. But as much as the book gets right about the future, it gets wrong as well. Because books are more popular than ever. Long form video content and endless critiques of power structures still exist. There's just more of everything now and (as of now) we make our own decision on what we spend our time on. As a cautionary tale it does work I think and Ray Bradbury never claimed that he tried to predict the future.

The book doesn't escape the solid undertone of 1950's pre feminist misogyny. Every single woman in this book except Clarisse (who's childish and innocent) is hysterical. It's not even clear if they have a job. Granted, given the book's short 200 page length, you never truly get an idea of everyday life in this Dystopia but I'd assume gender dynamics is one the things that hadn't changed. This is the biggest point of critique I have.”

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squishy_bee's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

It's a very quotable book, but I do find it lacks nuance sometimes.

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matonnhermann's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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magfx's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

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gvstyris's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

Fahrenheit 451 was the bane of my existence when I first read it, and I can now confidently confirm that my original 14-year-old opinion was incredibly based.

This book is a slog. For one thing, the world-building is pretty messy. The 'book ban' in this dystopia isn't a harrowing tale of authoritarian censorship, or particularly topical given what's happening in the 21st century US, because it's not about censorship at all: it's a 'metaphor' for a world where television rots everyone's braincells and short attention spans kill public interest in literature. In that way, Fahrenheit 451 reads as a 1950s time capsule that has not stood the test of time. It's anti-progress and (lowkey) just technology fear-mongering, which made a lot more sense once I unpacked Bradbury's political beliefs.

Honestly, this novel probably would've worked better in its original short story format. Montag's character arc is underdeveloped and unconvincing regardless, and I would've preferred to not to suffer through all 200-something pages of it.

Also, I feel the need to add that I can see why this book is so popular with a bunch of book lovers...lol. Anyways, I'm excited to re-read 1984 soon!

I'd like to conclude with some of Ray Bradbury's other words of true wisdom:

I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

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allthebooks36's review against another edition

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3.0

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