Okay just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 and I was truly blown away, I thought it was an amazingly nuanced and thoughtful look into ignorance and the dangers of conformity, how does /lit/ feel about the book?
yuck
the only good moment in the entire book is the split second that the bomb on the city lifts it all into the air before it crashes down again
that's it
I feel like Bradbury really has been proven correct. The ideas of self-censorship, of mindless media that drowns out life, have proven prophetic. The media became corporate and completely dumbed down. And it is relentless.
>>7790125
Yeah honestly despite this whole "progressive" movement getting really popular and the world as a whole is becoming more accepting, it's still not a world were people are actually open-minded and imaginative, it's just become the new fashion now to pretend to be "progressive". People are still judgmental of different ideas and concepts. Just you wait and see how "accepting" all these "like-minded liberal individuals" will be once they turn 60. I bet they'll be just as bigoted as the past generation by then.
>>7790109
To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand - that is art.
i was right where you were once, read it 2 more times and you'll be over it for about 5 years, then you'll re -read it once every two years with the same "meh" feeling in your chest but you can't seem to let the book go and then you'll see why people say its shit, and why others think its godsend.
>>7790141
I think one of the most overlooked aspects of the books is the deaths of the two women.
An elderly women would rather burn than live without her books. Mildred dies while entranced by The Family, completely oblivious to the world around her, especially the bomb that is about to reduce it all to dust.
The women's death is a galvanizing force in the story, and she lives on in Montag's memorization of two books of the Bible, the very book he saved from her inferno.
Mildred is an equally galvanizing force, but in the exact opposite. When she dies, she ceases to exist. The worth she provided to the world—if there was any to begin with—vanishes.
Books vs. television. Words vs. beige. A life that matters vs. a life that doesn't.
One of my favorite dichotomies in literature.
I dislike Fahrenheit 451 because as a concept it is so self-indulgent and masturbatory that it's hard to take seriously.
"A world where no one reads is a LITERAL DYSTOPIA, but people who DO read books, they're so special and so much smarter and better than everyone else!", it reads like something a bookish nerd would write after being stuffed in a locker.
>>7790207
its a litte bit more than that anon, you're oversimplifying it.
>>7790109
It was mixture of Brave New World and 1984...
>>7790231
F451 does have some merit, yea, but there's no doubt some form of (self)fellatio for readers in there. The fact that it's part of the typical High School core reading doesn't help that, either.
I dislike the book's complete demonization of non-literature media. I feel like it's hyperbolic. I both agree and disagree with >>7790167; the elderly woman and Mildred's significance is definitely important as symbols of how one can be effected (or not) by captivating "good"/shallow "bad" media, but I don't think that the "books vs. television" binary is as clear cut as the "life that matters vs. a life that doesn't."
People decry television and film for being lowbrow mediums while conveniently ignoring the fact that the best selling books are collections of tweets, wide-angle lens photobooks of dogs underwater, derivative YA, "naughty" sex books for housewives, and self-help books written by celebrity psychics. I mean, have you been in a Barnes and Noble lately?
No one medium is "pure" and totally devoid of "trash" and that's where I get distracted by the sheer ego present in F451. I understand that the shelves weren't littered with "8 Steps to a Brand New You, Today!" when it was being written, but from what I understand audiences WERE eating up pulp detective fiction and trashy romance novels instead of the classics Bradbury includes in his story.
>>7790274 cont
To add one more bit of elaboration, for example, just as I'll glean a lot stronger of an impression and more value from, say, Breaking Bad than Family Guy, a book like Divergent isn't going to be as good as Brothers Karamazov just because they're books.
>>7790109
Good allegory, but relies too much on the idea that everyone-is-an-idiot except me. I think there will always be people that care about the world's problems enough to avoid the scenario at the story's end.
I had to read this for school, and I went in thinking I would absolutely love this book, but it just feels so dry, and so boring. It feels like Ray Bradbury was purposely repeating himself to make it so the book was longer. There were times when I literally wanted to burn the book. I just didn't understand it! Is it because I am too young, and the vocabulary and the way he wrote it went over my head? Is it because it really is just a bland book. I did some research and I do get it. I understand that we live in a time when we are becoming senseless robots, only there to fulfill tasks given to us by the higher ups. Less and less of us are here to come up with ideas, and are really here to do things the way we were always told. But all the quote that were given throughout the book by the Captain I didn't understand. And the ending of the book I just did not get. So this group of hobos now memorize books in hope that one day they write all their knowledge down and spread it to the world? Seems strange to me. Why not just get a pen and paper and write it down and keep it in your pocket and move onto the next one? And the ending quote I did not understand at all...
Am I just dumb? Or am I just too young? Please help.
Is this one of those reddit simulation threads?
