Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 (also called 451 for short because that big word is hard to spell) by Ray Bradbury is a book and therefore boring because it has so many words and text and runs for 172 freaking pages like I have the time to read that. A film was also made of it but it was like 2 hours long. Who would want to watch a boring movie about books for two hours? One of those freaking intellectuals, probably.
Plot[edit]
The back of the book says that it is about this fireman called Guy Montag. Firemen are kinda cool and all, but what makes Montag really cool is that he has this flamethrower. Even better, his job is to burn down the houses of people who are found to have books. It really is a shame that there are no pictures in this book, and they would have made it easier to read too. The story of the novel is hard to follow, because of all the Adjectives and Similes and Justa... Juxstap... Jockstrap... Justaxaxupast... Other Crap Like That which Bradbury puts in to make him look clever. There are also a loads of long, rambling speeches about the media and crap which you can easily skip if you want, I did.
According to the story, Montag is probably not that cool after all, since he secretly hoards books himself. What is with all of these weirdos hiding books in their houses when they have perfectly good parlor wall TVs? Even worse, he tries to make his wife Mildred watch them, when she probably has a perfectly good Netflix account to go with those TVs. Montag finds he cannot understand the books (which is the one thing I actually found relatable), and he looks for this professor guy called Faber to dumb it down for him. He gets a nifty Bluetooth headset out of it.
Eventually, Montag's boss, Chief Beatty, makes him burn down his own house when he finds out about all his garbage books. Montag then burns his boss alive with his flamethrower, which is actually pretty awesome. I'd do that too if I was forced to burn my TVs. He runs away from the city instead of still flamethrower-ing everyone who opposed him like the badass he could have been, and gets to watch the place nuked into smithereens. Seriously, why did this book not have pictures!? It's just one of the reasons why I think, despite some cool-sounding moments, it overall sucked.
Action scenes[edit]
In Montag's world, people have realised how fucking stupid books are and burn them all. This is a bit odd because Fahrenheit 451 itself is a book but I guess we need to get the message across to those freaking intellectuals some way or another. It also talks about this Mechanical Hound which sounds cool but it's only mentioned a few times and it only kills one guy throughout the whole book. Then the blurb starts banging on about "Western civilisation's enslavement" and "poetic prose" and other long words like "prophetic". Do they seriously expect everyone to have dictionaries or what?
The book mainly contains people talking a lot or description about useless crap. There is a bit of burning like I saw on the cover but not really enough to be exciting. There is also a big explosion at the end, but Bradbury plonks a whole load of metaphors and description and hard words like "displaced" and "gouts" in the middle of it so it's not really worth it.
People set fire to things on pages 11, 45–47, 124, 127, 128, 153, and the big explosion is on pages 166–169. You can skip the rest of it and you won't miss much.
Sex scenes[edit]
You'd think that with all the torturous reading he makes us go through that Bradbury would give us something to get an erection over, but no. There are only three chicks in the novel, and none of them get naked at any time. Mildred is Montag's wife so she's taken already. She's old, and when Montag asks her to do shit she doesn't even do it. Then there's this crazy book lady who in another life would probably be keeping cats, and then she goes and sets fire to herself which just isn't a turn on at all.
Finally, there's this hot girl named Clarisse who would be really great if she didn't talk so much, or at least got naked once in a while. Montag pretty much has the hots for her but he doesn't do anything because he's a freaking pussy and she's like 17. Then she gets run over by a car. Bradbury doesn't even get round to describing her breasts. I mean, what was the point of even including her, then? Like so many other stories we were asked to read, this one makes no sense at all.
The theme or whatever the teacher calls it[edit]
The story of the novel is too long, but that's why SparkNotes comes in handy. Basically, the book is set in about the 21st or 22nd century where technology pwns. Ray Bradbury is obsessed with censorship and control. This can also be seen in Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian", another waste of time I was forced to read. In Fahrenheit 451, all books have been burned, everybody has nice projection TV's on their walls, and Uncyclopedia has replaced Wikipedia. I think that Bradbury should have been burned too for writing such a stupid book, because that future sounded awesome to me. It pretty much came true too, which just further proves how stupid he was, thinking we wouldn't like it or something because he likes his books so much. What a nerd.
Adaptations[edit]
In Michael Moore's 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, there is a reference to Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury objected to the latter's allusion to his work, claiming that Moore "stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission."
Also, the dystopic theatrical play Fahrenheit 56K is about freedom of speech and Internet in a fictional dictatorship.
The bottom line: the book sucks[edit]
I heard this book was banned in some schools, and I would say it's no surprise. The story sucks, there's hardly any action, the main character never sleeps with any of the women, and the theme is totally bogus. It's like Ray Bradbury thinks he is somehow smarter than us, because he reads books instead of watching TV like everybody else, and uses lots of big words just to sound smart. Well, the joke's on him, because I used SparkNotes again to write a single-page book report on his dumb book, and apparently it was so good the teacher wants to talk with me about it after class!
But seriously, books are stupid, books about books are stupider, and movies about books about books are even stupider. I wish our school banned this one, too. I'm going to burn my copy and tell Bradbury he can suck it.