In the lead-up to our tenth year, Malden Reads participated in Banned Book Week in September, to stand up for Fahrenheit 451 and other banned books (including some previous Malden Reads book selections), beginning the exploration of censorship and how that affects our community. In Fahrenheit 451, all books are banned and replaced by sanctioned entertainment to make people not think, have feelings, or have concerns so that they can, therefore, “be happy.” We know from the protagonist, Guy Montag, and the dissidents he encounters that many people want to explore their memories and feelings and that they are not happy with what they are being fed.īradbury stated “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
(Though published in 1953, the novel eerily foretells ear buds, reality television, and more.) The rest of the book reads like an action thriller, with a message of hope for the future at its end. Fahrenheit 451 follows the growth of fireman Guy Montag, who has begun questioning their way of life: always fast, never thinking or reflecting, and full of technological distractions. In the dystopian world of the novel, firefighters start fires instead of putting them out, and they burn home libraries, which are forbidden. What’s the title mean? Bradbury asserts that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book paper burns. The Malden Reads team has long been planning to select a classic, and the team is thrilled to choose Fahrenheit 451 for the 10 th year of the program, this year known as the “NEA Big Read.” Considered one of the major novels of the 20th century, Fahrenheit 451 has won many awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Prometheus “Hall of Fame” Award, and a Hugo Award. Fahrenheit 451 is a ‘masterpiece … everyone should read’ (Boston Globe).”
Bradbury takes the materials of pulp fiction and transforms them into a visionary parable of a society gone awry, in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. “There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house.” – Fahrenheit 451Ĭalled ‘the book for our social media age’ by the New York Times, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a gripping story that is at once disturbing and poetic.
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