Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Source of book: I own this.

 

This book is part of my very informal series, “Books I Should Have Read In High School.” And nope, this wasn’t part of my curriculum, and I never did get around to reading it. I brought it along on our annual brothers and cousins backpack trip, as I had a beat up paperback that I didn’t mind getting dirty. 

 

It is pretty rare for me to read a book that has been deemed a “classic,” and come away disappointed. But that was definitely the case for this book. It had its moments, but it has serious flaws that have made it age poorly, in my opinion. This was doubly disappointing because I generally have enjoyed reading Ray Bradbury, and some of the things he says in this book (and even more so in the Coda written some years later) diminish my opinion of him as a person and as an author, which always sucks. 

 

The story is pretty familiar, and there isn’t that much to the plot. In fact, the book started its life as a short story entitled “The Fire Man,” which was then expanded into what is really a short novella. This doesn’t give much time for character development, and what time there is tends to be squandered (again, in my opinion) on preachiness. 

 

Now, don’t get me wrong: I am concerned about censorship and book burning. Heck, I read a banned book every year and write about it. I wrote years ago about the distinction between a banned and a challenged book. My wife and I do not censor our children’s reading, and encourage them to read banned books - and discuss the reasons behind the banning and what they mean for us now. 

 

So I do care about this, and do not wish to see books censored. I’m on Bradbury’s side when it comes to book banning. 

 

So what is the issue? Well, there are a number of related issues, and I hope to unpack them one at a time. 

 

Although it probably is a good place to start to just say, “Oh god, white men of a certain age are just insufferable.” 

 

Okay, so let’s start with this issue:

The Cold War haunts a lot of literature from the 1950s.

 

On the one hand, this is entirely understandable. And, in this book, the most believable part of it is the mutual incineration of most of humanity in a nuclear war. This makes sense, and, whether you believe mutually assured destruction is still a big threat or not, it will always be a timeless concern in the nuclear age. 

 

Likewise, the idea that the politicians and the military-industrial complex would want to keep the truth about the war from the populace is legit, whether through suppression of ideas or the use of mindless entertainment. 

 

What has not aged nearly as well is the idea that the major threat to liberal democracy on earth is Communism - and ONLY Communism.

 

In fact, this didn’t make sense even in 1953. 

 

Surely people of Bradbury’s generation remembered a certain world war, where we fought off the Nazis and other Fascists? Did they forget it that fast? Did they not remember that the Nazis burned books too? 

 

(And, for that matter, the common thread between the Soviets and the Nazis wasn’t economics, but totalitarianism - authoritarianism taken to its most extreme form.)

 

Oh, and maybe Bradbury could have looked back to the entire history of book bans here in the United States - and in England. 

 

Every time, it was the forces of conservatism that pushed for censorship. 

Bradbury bought the lie that equity, diversity, and inclusion meant Communism

 

Man, this is the one that hurts. I was not expecting this. I mean, I expect this from right wingers, particularly those who are uneducated, but, well, old white dudes, I guess. 

 

So, it first comes up in Beatty’s explanation to Montag about how book burning got started. Among the usual (and unfortunately also dated) explanations - TV made people stupid and senseless, nobody cared to read, etc. - Beatty also blames “minorities and their hurt feelings.” 

 

So, in Bradbury’s view, the big threat comes from women and minorities who complain about books that subject them to slurs, stereotypes, and condescension - or which simply ignore and omit them. 

 

Say what? 

 

Now, since Beatty is the antagonist in the book, it would be fair to ask whether his views reflect those of Bradbury. Maybe he is just spouting his own prejudice?

 

Nope. 

 

In the Coda, Bradbury doubles down and doubles down and doubles down. Yeesh. 

 

And even in the book - get this - Bradbury illustrates his point as follows:

 

Little Black Sambo (written and illustrated by a white woman) offended black people, while Uncle Tom’s Cabin offended whites, so they were both censored. 

 

Gah! So, I mean, how much is wrong about this whole illustration? 

 

Let’s see: first, BOTH books were written by white women. 

 

Oh, and I might also mention here that in both the book AND in the Coda, every single author Bradbury mentions is….white. And overwhelmingly male. (The only exception is the Bible, but that was translated and often mistranslated by white people, so….) 

 

Surely Bradbury had read books by people who weren’t white? Or was he only concerned about censorship of books written by white people? One kind of wonders, given the lack of diversity in his authors. 

 

And about those books: if you cannot see the difference, then you haven’t thought very deeply. 

 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a truly classic work of literature, which has stood the test of time. (It is nearly 125 years old now, and was instrumental in the abolitionist movement.) While it does have some dated elements, it still is a powerful story that speaks truth about American history. Also, while it was written by a white woman, it spoke truth to power - she called out her own race, both the Southern enslavers and the Northern enablers. 

 

In contrast, Little Black Sambo enjoyed a few decades of popularity….among white people. It was condemned from the start by those of African descent for its “pickaninny” caricatures, its use of racial slurs for the names of its characters, and its portrayal of black people as simple minded. 

 

If you want to have a nuanced discussion about the different approaches of the oppressed to their oppression, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book is part of that conversation. (I personally believe Uncle Tom to be one of the great heroes in literature - a man who gave his life to protect those weaker than himself.) You won’t get that from Sambo. 

 

In fact, nobody younger than my grandparents’ generation has fond thoughts about that book. It was a flash in the pan, of a time, and has rightly been consigned to the dustbin of history. Good riddance.

 

So, if one really had to pick books to compare for censorship, perhaps going with Invisible Man as a book that offended white people would be a good start. But there really isn’t a good counterpart for black people, is there? 

 

Because making the powerful and privileged uncomfortable will never be the equivalent of racial slurs, stereotypes, and general denigration of minorities. (And women.) 

 

So, let’s return to Bradbury’s premise: has it ever been the case that a mass, government sponsored censorship project has arisen from a desire to avoid using slurs and stereotypes? Or is the usual pattern that those with the power try to silence the voices of those with less power? 

 

Case in point: Florida is currently on a jihad against books that discuss systemic racism or acknowledge the experiences of LGBTQ people. Hmm. Doesn’t look like a bunch of offended minorities and women running amok. It looks like the usual: right wing bigots trying to exterminate the voices that contradict their ideology. The losers, as always, are the minority voices themselves, who will no longer be on shelves or available to children. 

Bradbury’s writing has issues too.

 

After reading this, I thought back on the book itself. (And to a degree, Bradbury’s other books.) Fahrenheit 451 is an early book, so he wrote well into my lifetime. 

 

In this book, there are zero characters who are described as non-white. Judging from the names, they are likely all quite white - middle class, educated, white people much like Bradbury himself. 

 

America of Bradbury’s time was more diverse than that, although academia, perhaps not so much. 

 

And then there are the women. Let’s count them up, and see what they do in this story. 

 

Mildred, Montag’s wife. Insipid, suicidal, and addicted to television. 

Mildred's friends: same as above.

Little old lady who immolates herself when her books are burned. 

Clarisse: an early example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. (There is an argument that Bradbury created the type in this book, actually…) 

 

So, no women who are dynamic characters. 

 

Perhaps Bradbury is being a bit defensive here - his own stories lack diversity, so the complaints of women and minorities are rightfully directed at him. 

 

And that brings us to:

Fahrenheit 451 suffers from Bradbury’s lack of ability to imagine diversity

 

The biggest blunder? How on god’s green earth is the preservation of knowledge limited to a bunch of white guys? 

 

Even back hundreds of years before Bradbury, women have driven the market and consumption of books. If you want to know who would successfully hide books, it isn’t the impulsive and entitled men like Montag. It would be women. 

 

And the same holds today. Sure, I know some men who read extensively. (I’m one of them!) But by percentages, women are where it is at. That group of wandering sages at the end of the book would, then and now, consist at least equally of women (and their memories would probably be better too…) 

 

It would also be racially diverse, something Bradbury seems to have missed. In fact, another Science Fiction writer, the amazing Octavia Butler, got it exactly right: the groups that will be working together to rebuild civilization will be recognizable because of their diversity. 

 

So, in this sense, Fahrenheit 451 felt a lot less true than it would have, had Bradbury opened his mind to more than the old white guy paradigm. And I think that is why it is already aging badly.

What about McCarthyism?

 

I mean, when this was written, Bradbury literally could look around him and see that there were active efforts to silence artists….by the right wing. Joseph McCarthy started his crusade against leftist artists in 1950. At the time Fahrenheit 451 was published, the televised witch hunts were starting. 

 

So, I mean, how dense was Bradbury to completely ignore the most significant event of his time, when it came to artistic freedom? 

 

Again, this was hugely disappointing to me. The very same year as this book, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, which was a thinly veiled metaphor for McCarthyism. So it is doubly disappointing that Bradbury decided to go straight to “it’s those damn minorities and women ruining everything.” 

 

So what IS good about this book?

 

Well, there are some things that I think Bradbury did get right. 

 

I already mentioned the use of entertainment to distract from foolish warmongering. And his understanding that nuclear war would simply mean mutual annihilation. 

 

I think he is also correct that a love of books tends to correlate with a love of nature and a sense of wonder. (It certainly does for me, but for many of my most literary friends as well.) 

 

There are also some things about the 1950s that I think he portrays quite accurately. At this point it is a truism (and thus not all that true) that television makes people dumb. As Steven Johnson pointed out in Everything Bad is Good for You, television, video games, and other modern pop culture media have actually gotten a lot smarter over time, at least for the higher quality stuff. 

 

So, while Bradbury (and cultural pundits generally) are wrong about the long term. 

 

But Bradbury was, I think, correct about the generation he was writing about. My parents and grandparents’ generations watched a LOT of really stupid television. (My grandparents watched so much Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy - which was about as smart as one could find back in the day - but they were unusual.) It is not an accident that Fox News was able to co-opt their politics and indeed their morality and reason so completely. The dreck that passed for television in the 1950s and 60s (with a few exceptions) probably did rot their brains. 

 

Also not coincidental is that at present, Baby Boomers read the least of any generation, and watch the most television. 

 

Thus, I give Bradbury credit for writing what he saw for his peers and their children. 

 

The reason it hasn’t aged well is related to another belief that still remains popular: the idea that the next technology will change human nature, usually for ill. 

 

My own experience and reading of history is that human nature doesn’t change much. We still have the same kludgy operating system that is capable of great things and horrible things. And no technology changes that over the long run. That is why television and video games have evolved the way they have. Human nature wins in the end, and complexity and challenge are part of that nature. A few generations were blindsided and unable to adapt, but their offspring who grew up with it had a sort of immunity, so to speak, and a desire to express themselves in the new medium. 

 

Case in point here: have you realized how absolutely fucking STOOPID advertising from the 1950s was? Nobody in my generation would have fallen for it, and my kids’ generation thinks it is hilarious and laughable. But it sure sold crap back in the day. Culture adapts. And it will continue to adapt. 

 

Finally, I thought Bradbury’s idea that oral tradition would carry knowledge forward in the absence of books to be excellent. That’s how knowledge was passed down prior to affordable printing. The written word enables widespread sharing and retention of knowledge, but it also ossifies belief in a way that oral traditions do not. (See for example the way that written holy books become unalterable while oral traditions adapt over time.) 

 

In a post-technology apocalypse, humans will indeed rely more on their own memory and the passing down of knowledge by word of mouth and direct training. So points for that. (Even if he did miss that women are the key link when it comes to oral knowledge and practical skills.) 

 

So, those are my thoughts on this book, and even more so on Bradbury’s postscript doubling-down on the worst of his ideas. 

 

I feel kind of like he has pulled a J. K. Rowling here: he makes an own-goal by turning his ire on minorities rather than the powerful, thus (like Rowling) undermining the whole point he was trying to make. 

 

And really, those points are valid and important: the powerful love to ban or burn books because they pose a threat to their power and privilege. Giants and transgender people alike are demonized and slandered by demagogues who feed people’s fears, fanning anxiety into hatred and violence. 

 

Which is why in our present time, just as in the past, the targets of book bans are those who speak truth to power, who question blind obedience to authority, and who encourage us to think more deeply, more compassionately, and more inclusively. 

 

So definitely, read Fahrenheit 451, and appreciate what Bradbury did, even while understanding his blind spots.