FAHRENHEIT 451: IT'S NOT ABOUT THE BOOKS

My 8th grade honors class has started reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a prescient novel from 1953 about a dystopian future where it is the job of firemen to start fires rather than to extinguish them. And every such fire begins with the discovery of a homeowner illegally in possession of a book. 

Reading is shunned while distracting technology is wholeheartedly embraced.

The hero, Guy Montag, is a fireman who gets a little too curious about the books he is tasked with destroying, sneaking one home to secretly peruse, looking for something that is missing from his life. 

Guy recalls once meeting an old English professor in a park and suspecting the man was concealing a book of poetry. Now he seeks out professor Faber looking for clues as to what books can offer.

I have read Fahrenheit 451 several times before and even taught it before. But this time through I am seeing something important that I missed before: the story is not really about burning books. It is about the loss of what Faber says books represent. 

Montag complains to Faber, "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help."

And Faber responds, "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books." 

He elaborates that three things associated with books are missing:

1) "Truthfully recorded details of life"

2) "Time to think"

3) "The right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two"

Whoa. This hits me in a way I never saw before. During the six months I was unemployed, I found #1 and #2. Now with a new position and a new stage of life and career, I am in the process of #3. I wish everyone could experience at least this aspect of my past year. I jokingly called it a sabbatical, but that is what it has been, at least when the concept of sabbatical lives up to its true potential. 

Here's one more line that Bradbury puts in Faber's mouth that I am chewing on because it also rings true with my recent experience with books: 

"The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are."

Hmmm. Interesting in light of the fact that the book Montag carries with him on his visit to Faber's house is ... the Bible.