Book 8: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Warning: spoilers

Like many Americans my age, this book was required reading in school. I believe 8th grade, definitely before high school. I didn't get it, the only scene that stuck out enough to me to remember was when Montag read a poem to his wife and her friends and one of them them burst into tears. 

I read the graphic novel version a decade later, which I really didn't like as I thought the visual depiction took away a lot from the story. But that was when I decided to purchase a copy of the novel for myself, even though I didn't read it until now. 

Part of reading this in middle school was teachers & parents chastising us, the students, for being very similar to the characters in the book (not the protagonist). We did strongly prefer to watch TV, we stayed inside most of the time, we didn't explore or create, we were very shallow... that's how we were raised! Matilda and Harriet The Spy we're banned from the school library not because of their contents, but because the teachers said "helping you read is too annoying, just watch the movie." While I was rereading Fahrenheit 451 now I kept wondering how these teachers and parents didn't see themselves in the book! Back then I didn't pick up on the addiction to TV in the book because that's what the adults around my classmates & I allowed us to do, and then they blamed us for it when they made us read a book criticizing them! 

The misogyny and whiteness of the book are irksome. The one female character with any redeeming qualities not only dies, but is also very much a manic pixie dream girl for the protagonist. Very early in the book, he refers to himself as a minstrel because of how the soot from fires blackened his skin - yikes, I didn't understand that reference in middle school! An antagonist refers to Little Black Sambo and Uncle Tom's Cabin as equal books, and at that point it's unclear whether he's making that comparison because he's the antagonist or if that was Bradbury himself speaking. Yes the book is a product of its time, and also most of the books I've read thus far in my project are more sociopolitically nuanced than this.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13079982-fahrenheit-451 

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