Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – Review

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Important Announcement:

Hello my lovely readers! I hope everyone is having an amazing day. As of recently, I have been working to create a podcast version of my blog, also under the name of Maya’s Reviews. You can find more information on the podcast in the Podcast page. I hope that creating a podcast version of Maya’s Reviews will not only make my reviews more accessible, but also more enjoyable.

Thank you for reading! And now onto my review of Fahreneheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

-Maya

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⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

All quotes are taken from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

~Quick Statistics~

Overall: 3/5 Stars

Plot: 4/5 Stars

Setting: 2/5 Stars

Characters: 3/5 Stars

Writing: 1/5 Stars

Memorability: 1/5 Stars

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

~Quick Review~

For a relatively popular classic, I was rather disappointed with this novel.  Though the concept was interesting and I quickly read this book, I did so because I wanted to get it over with.  I was mildly amused throughout, but in my opinion, I don’t regard this novel as a ‘masterpiece’.

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

~Other Information~

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Page Count: 194 pages

Release Date: October 19, 1953

~Book Description (via Goodreads)~

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

~Characters~

Guy Montag, a firefighter in an age where books are considered a crime against society, is the boring character that this novel follows.  I think that the novel would have been far better had its main character been more interesting and lively.  It seemed as if Ray Bradbury had the outline of a character but didn’t go further to make his character actually realistic and human.  But perhaps, that is the point of the novel.  With the lack of novels in Guy’s boring life, maybe he is dull as a result.  Nevertheless, the way that Montag progressed from viewing books as something awful to wanting to gain knowledge through them was a much needed piece of character development.

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”

~Writing and Setting~

The writing style was very vague and left me to try to envision this dystopian and futuristic world that Bradbury designed.  I didn’t enjoy this very much, I’m not very imaginative, and it is typically hard for me to visualize even when the surroundings of a character are described.

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a future where books are essentially outlawed and your house can be burned down for owning them.  You can also go to jail for having them in your possession.  Needless to say, I’d be screwed.

~Plot~

The plot was by far my favorite part of the novel.  Though excruciatingly slow paced, the novel had such an interesting concept that I continued to read.  The idea that one might be jailed in the future for reading, something that is encouraged in our society today, was absolutely preposterous yet riveting.  I cannot imagine how different my life would be had I not read throughout it.  This blog wouldn’t even exist!

~Overall Review~

While it was not a novel that I consider fantastic, it definitely had aspects that are fairly genius.  It was just not my cup of tea.

“It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”

Author’s Website

Amazon

Goodreads

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