Fahrenheit 451 (1953) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Guy Montag: He is the protagonist of the story, and he is a fireman. He lived in ignorance like the rest of society.
• Mildred 'Millie' Montag: Montag's wife is one character who seems to have no hope of resolving the conflicts within herself. Mildred represents the ideal citizen in F451's society.
• Captain Beatty: Guy's boss and fire captain. Often over-bearing, manipulative but is mysteriously knowledgeable of literature and seems to understand Guy.
• Mr. Faber: He is an intelligent man who was an English professor. He befriends Guy.
• Clarisse McClellan: Clarisse is a seventeen year old girl who behaves differently from other people and makes Montag think differently. Clarisse McClellan displays every trait Mildred does not, in that she is outgoing, naturally cheerful, unorthodox, and intuitive. She serves as the wake-up call for Montag by posing the question “Why?” to him as well as asking if he is happy. She is unpopular among peers and disliked by teachers for (as Captain Beatty puts it) asking why instead of how and focusing on nature rather than on technology.
• Granger: A well-educated man who has read many books.
• Mrs. Phelps: Mildred's friends (Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps) represent the average citizens in the numbed society portrayed in the novel. They are examples of the people in the society who are unhappy but do not think they are. When Montag introduces them to literature (the poem Dover Beach), which symbolizes the pain and happiness that has been censored from them, Mrs. Phelps is overwhelmed by the rush of emotion that she has not felt before.
• Mrs. Bowles: Mildred's friends (Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps) represent the average citizens in the numbed society portrayed in the novel. They are examples of the people in the society who are unhappy but do not think they are. When Montag introduces them to literature (the poem Dover Beach), which symbolizes the pain and happiness that has been censored from them, Mrs. Phelps is overwhelmed by the rush of emotion that she has not felt before.
• Stoneman: A fireman in Guy Montag's team.
• Pete: He is a fireman on Guy Montag's team.
• Winston Noble and Hubert Hoag: Winston Noble and Hubert Hoag are presidential candidates. Winston Noble is described as extremely charismatic and charming and "one of the nicest-looking men who ever became president," by Mrs. Bowles. His so-called "redeeming" characteristics are solely based on his looks alone, as people are so ignorant that they judge everyone on their outward appearance (judging a book by its' cover). Noble defeated Hoag in a landslide. Hoag is described as homely and disheveled. They symbolize the dichotomous control of political dialogue that allow the events of the book to take place.
• Mechanical Hound: A mechanical hound used by the firemen to apprehend victims and kill them by injection with morphine or procaine.
• Clarisse's Uncle: Constantly referred to by Clarisse McClellan, as "my uncle said.." my uncle once..". He did things that were unheard of in the new world like sit and have fun, meaningless conversations with his family.
• Mr. Simmons: Initialization
• Jonathan Swift: an author
• Black: A fireman who works with Montag
• Mrs. Black: The wife of the fireman whos house Montag hides books and then turns in to the firemen.
• Helen: Add a description of this character.
• Nicholas Ridley

Quotes edit see section history

• “Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, bern 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.”

  Guy Montag

• “There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone.”

• “He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other.”

• “His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.”

• “It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlour families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe into one garment for us.”

• “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality and what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. this book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, steaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

• “The magic in what books say:Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

• “I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”

  Clarisse

• “FAHRENHEIT 451: The temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns.”

• “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

• “She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it.”

• “Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

• “You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”

• “People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”

• ““Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?” “No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.” “Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.””

• “He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like grey animals peering from electric caves, faces with grey colourless eyes, grey tongues and grey thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face.”

• “The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.”

  Faber

• “The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burned!”

• “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

  Ray Bradbury, from Coda

• “Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fixing nuts and bolts?”

  Beatty

• “...he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.”

  In Montag's mind

• “I'll hold onto the world tight someday. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.”

  Montag (thinking to himself)

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

  Granger

• “Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. everyone is using everyone else's coattails.”

• “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.”

  Granger

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

  Faber

• “There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!”

  Montag (thinking)

• “And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world... there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given a new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me.”

  Captain Beatty

• “Does you family love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”

• “Who's more important, me or that Bible?”

  Mildred

• “We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy”

  Montag

• “Nobody listens anymore”

  Montag

• “And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense.”

  Montag

• “It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.”

  Faber

• “Books show the pores in the face of life.”

  Faber

• “It must be RIGHT.”

• “It SEEMS so right.”

• “It rushes you you on so quickly to it's own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, "What nonsense!"”

• “That's the good part of dying, when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”

  Montag

• “We do NEED knowledge”

• “Can't trust people, that's the dirty part.”

• “We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering.”

• “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”

  Faber

• “But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen.”

  Faber

• “Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the grass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

  Faber

• “A book is a loaded gun.”

• “For a little while I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last.”

  Faber

• “But you can't make people listen. They have to come 'round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them.”

  Granger

• “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”

  Beatty

• “Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”

  captain betty

• “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh?, Uh!, Bang!, Smack!, Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in midair, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”

  Beatty

• “"I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly." Clairres”

• “"Are you happy?"”

  Clarisse

• “"For what! Why!" said Montag. "I saw a damnedest snake in the world the other night. It saw dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn't see. You want to see that snake? It's at Emergency Hospital where they filed a on all the junk the snake got out of you! Would you like to go and check their file? Maybe you'd look under Guy Montag or maybe under Fear or War. Would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake ashes for the bones of the women who set fire to her own houe! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue! Listen!”

• “"You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."”

  Montag

• “"Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what the books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

  Faber

• “He heard a number of people crying out in the darkness and shouting. He reached the backyard and the alley. Beatty, he thought, you're not a problem now. You always said, don't face a problem, burn it. Well, now I've done both. Good-bye, Captain. And he stumbled along the alley in the dark.”

• ““Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, 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.””

  Granger

Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• The firehouse: Where Montag works. Laid out much like a conventional firehouse but instead of putting out fires, the firemen here make them.
• Montag's home: One of the many identical homes in the city.
• The old woman's home
• Faber's apartment: The apartment of a former college professor.
• The world outside the city
• The River

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• 451 Degrees Fahrenheit: The temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns.
• Trench Mouth: An infectious disease producing mouth ulcers in the mucous membranes of the mouth and throat.
• Clarisse: A name derived from the Latin word for "brightest".
• Electronic bees: Futuristic "seashell ear-thimbles" that block out thoughts and supplant them with mindless entertainment.
• Fireman: Instead of the modern firemen, these people help to light fires instead of put them out, because houses are not completely fireproof. They burn all books.
• Mechanical Hound: A dog like creature that has been programmed (by the government) to avenge and punish citizens who break society's rules. The ones who are not loyal to the rules must especially be punished, and the Hound serves as the enforcer of these rules.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Salamander: In Medieval mythology it was believed that the salamander was able to breathe fire. In the winter months salamanders would hide in logs to hibernate. When people would take the logs into their homes and set them in the fire the salamanders would crawl out of the logs to escape the heat. People would mistake the escaping salamanders for smaller fire breathing dragons. The Salamanders were a symbol of Hell. people believed that fire breathers, or dragons, were worms, and worms are a symbol of Hell or Satan. In Fahrenheit 451, the fire truck is called the Salamander because it is the bringer of Hell, the burner of books.
• The Mirrors: At the end of the book, the professor suggested creating a factory of mirrors, and one of the many reasons he wanted to build a mirror factory is because mirrors show us who we are. They show us the truth even when we are not willing to look at ourselves. the same could be applied to this novel. build a factory of mirrors and show the people what society has come to. It's a symbol of honesty, an unavoidable honesty.
• The Phoenix: In Mythology, when the phoenix is so old that it is on the brink of death, it dies and is reborn from its ashes. the symbol of the phoenix on the firemen's suit is a symbol of irony. Instead of starting anew and growing better from birth, they demolish society. At the end of the book when the nuclear bomb destroyed the city, the phoenix can also apply. The city is completely destroyed and now it can be reborn, start over again.
• Censorship: Describe this theme.
• Eyes
• Taking Action (Montag) vs. Remaining Passive (Mildred)
• Distraction vs.Facing Reality
• Fire: Fire in this book symbolizes the destruction of knowledge.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Ray Bradbury (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Sonja Kravanja (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• California Book Award (1953: Fiction, Silver)
• Hugo Award (1954: Best Novel)
• Prometheus (1984: Hall of Fame Award Recipient)
• Geffen Award (2002: Best Translated Science Fiction Book)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3503.R167
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

This book is highly recommended for all readers over 13. There is some mild bad language to help illustrate points, and a few disturbing scenes concerning burning people and things.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Authors, A-Z › ( B ) › Bradbury, Ray
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction › Adventure
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• The Folio Society: In 1950, Ray Bradbury had a kernel of an idea for a story, and rented a typewriter in the basement of the UCLA library for nine days (it cost him $9.80). Dashing from the basement to the stacks to track down half-remembered quotations and typing at furious speed, in that short time he produced the first draft of an extraordinary novel. Serialised, widely published, adapted for film, theatre and even opera, the book, as Bradbury wrote, ‘seems to have a life that goes on recreating itself’.
• Wikipedia: This link will throw a lot of additional light on this book
• Secondary Solutions: Common Core and NCTE/IRA Standards-Aligned Literature Guide for teaching Fahrenheit 451
• Equilibrium movie in IMDB: Movie based on this book.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Fahrenheit 451 (1966) (IMDb): Starring Oskar Werner, and Julie Christie

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

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Books That Cite This Book edit see section history