Tag Archives: Fahrenheit 451

The premise of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ is the stuff of nightmares for bibliophiles everywhere.  Ray Bradbury’s portrayal of a dystopian society in which books are  outlawed would be like hell for all book-lovers: as we are told on the first page, Fahrenheit 451 is “the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns”.  The book tells the story of a fireman called Guy Montag, except he is not the sort of fireman we would normally imagine –  instead of putting fires out, firemen in Bradbury’s not too distant future deliberately start fires in places where books are found. From the moment when his seventeen year old neighbour Clarisse McClellan asks him if he is happy, Montag starts to question everything around him especially when Clarisse disappears and his wife, Mildred, attempts suicide.   Continue reading →