Ode to Fahrenheit 451

 

            I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by the prophetic Ray Bradbury this weekend and it was as exhilarating and inspiring as the first time. I remember my initial exposure to this when I was in the 7^th grade. I was part of a science fiction club and the teacher would either show a sci-fi movie, read from a sci-fi book or anthology, and we would discuss what we’d just digested. During one of these sessions the teacher recommended that we read this delightful short novel, and I consider this quite providential. I’d already had inchoate thoughts that tended towards Bradbury’s main idea in this story, but this really set me on fire for learning and especially reading, something I’ve kept with me and will treasure for the rest of my life. There are many different themes and sub-themes that are immaculately tied together here, but this is an overarching one that informs them all. At the heart of the story is the idea that we only become fully human when we are exercising 100% of ourselves, especially the part of us that matters the most – the intellect. The intellect is the very breath of life in humanity. As Christ once said, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). I’ve been rewatching the great sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica lately and in it one of the protagonists, Commander Adama, says something similar. “It’s not enough to live, you have to have something to live for.” According to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Plotinus, Jesus Christ, and countless others, including Ray Bradbury, this “something to live for” is the wonder that is born of God’s greatest gift to man, the very thing that makes us like God (imago Dei), the mind.

Our minds are what separate us, if not in kind, then in substantial degree from all other animals. Thinking may not be physically exhausting, but it actually is much more difficult than anything physical. Genius ideas are much harder to come by, take much more willpower, and drain us far more than anything we can do with just our bodies. This is reflected in society in the fact that the most physically difficult, menial hard labor jobs typically earn much less than those that require brainpower. Just think of when you were in school; many people would be much more willing to do physical exercise and sports than do their damndest to get the best grades they possibly could, and the latter is definitely rarer and more difficult. The fire chief Beatty (who plays a similar role as Mustapha Mond in Brave New World) tells us how the “idiocracy” the characters inhabit came about with people clamoring for

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less…. With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Sure you remember the boy in you own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against” (55-56).

As a species, we often hate those that make us look bad. The proper reaction would be to ditch our jealousy and rise to the occasion to do the best we can. Much easier, though, to just hate them and silence them through brute force; this is the more well-trod path, historically speaking. As the professor Faber says in the novel, “Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents” (86).

Bradbury thinks this is the heart of the matter. Being an astute and mature observer of human nature, he realizes that we often attempt to hide our insecurities with an exterior veneer of toughness. I vividly remember this in high school, especially. It seemed like a badge of honor for people to not pursue academic interests, they seemed to rejoice in their stupidity and lack of effort. Then they go about bullying the “nerds,” until they need their help with homework. Bradbury realizes that this anti-intellectual pride is just a mask people try to put on to hide the fact that they are deeply ashamed, perhaps so deeply they don’t consciously see that they have chosen an inferior path. Bradbury, though, expertly illustrates that even the worst among us do feel this shame. One of the most annoying and maligned characters in the book, Mildred, is shown compassion by the author. In the beginning of the novel, she tries to commit suicide, because even though she tries to deny that her soul requires more than watching mindless entertainment all day, she knows deep down that her heart calls out for more. Mildred’s husband, the fireman and protagonist Guy Montag, depressingly reflects on his feelings for her. Even though he was terrified she was going to die, he later thinks,

“that if she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman…” (42).

Even the antagonist, Beatty was somewhat redeemed in the novel when Montag comes to the realization that he wanted to die (119). Even the most evil guy in the book couldn’t tolerate the culture of death and stupidity he signed up for. This is what Bradbury was seeking to shed light on in order to prevent it—a society of mindless and vacuous people that feel nothing for one another because they don’t have one independent thought in their heads.

In this novel, we see this attitude run amok. Clarisse fills the niche of the person society claims is a weirdo. They send her to a psychiatrist for the “mental illness” of thinking too much and for the desire to speak about the thoughts she has while she daydreams whilst hiking in the wilderness. In this strange, yet all too familiar culture, she is considered the antisocial one for wanting to explore things that pique her curiosity and for desiring to know the depths of another person’s soul. As she says, “People don’t talk about anything. No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else” (29). I’m sure we are all familiar with this experience, since ours is basically an imbecilic consumerist society that is headed straight for what is depicted in the excellent Pixar flick, Wall-E. Montag says the same thing much more harshly, but perhaps even more honestly – humanity has become a “gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud” (43). There is only one proper response to this attitude. We should follow the Enlightenment slogan “Saper aude” – Dare to know. Learn and become smarter – avoid becoming a gibbering tree-ape.

At this point you may be asking how we got here and why? People often mistake F451 as a cautionary tale about government censorship like 1984, but this is not the case. Bradbury’s proposal is much more radical. The government didn’t even NEED to censor us, because we censored ourselves, in part, due to the worst vice that can inhabit a human being – apathy. No less an authority than the Lord himself direly warns us against this, “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Rev 3:16). Not giving a shit is the worst thing you can possibly do. Montag fights back against his wife’s cries to just leave her alone, “We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real” (50)? There are so many problems and people suffering in the world that it’s a damn shame that we can be so complacent about it. We shouldn’t go to the other extreme of worrying ourselves to death over things we can’t control. However, I think it does make sense that we should feel at least a little uneasy that we are doing so well when others are struggling; there is always more we can do to help. The first step to doing that is to realize it.

Another reason as to how this society was formed is due to the loss of free speech by catering to special interest and minority groups.

“Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico…. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca…. Technology, mass exploitations, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God” (55-56).

I once met Ray Bradbury in high school when he came to the public library and I can say that he is a nice man and doesn’t like to offend anybody. His point is that we can’t go censoring books in order to appease everyone because then you are left with a dull and anodized version of what was originally there. In his time, he was fighting against the right-wing totalitarians like Senator McCarthy that wanted to root communists out of the US by censoring books and blacklisting people. Now it is the left-wing people who are doing that. Bradbury is right when he says it doesn’t matter whether your totalitarianism is left or right, at the end of the day tyranny is tyranny. There is more than one way to burn a book. You can do so with fire or you can just start removing words, trimming the fat until only an emaciated husky is left. Even F451 was censored without the author’s permission for years! How’s that for irony?

Bradbury learned more from Brave New World than 1984. I too think it is the better and more realistic book. The way to really control the people is not to bring the force of the boot on their necks, but to cater to their vices and let them destroy themselves. Since the fall, we are naturally drawn to laziness, instant gratification, the lusts of the flesh and the eyes (1 John 2:16). So just give people all the pleasure they want, and you can lull them into a cow-like herdlike stupidity. Keep them glued to massive wall TVs, blot out the urge to wonder about this strange and beautiful world we live in by dulling their minds with inane gossip and newsbytes full of “facts”, and as a result compassion flies right out the window.  “Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with,” Beatty declares (59). This is so prophetic it’s almost miraculous. Most people don’t read full length books anymore – it’s like pulling teeth to get most to read something longer than a page. Even then, most people only read the headlines of articles or look at memes for their “information.” It is an impoverished age when one of the most popular websites only lets you post 240 characters. Plato warned us over 2500 years ago of the dangers of pursuing simple-minded, instant pleasure over having a clear and wide vision and waiting for longer lasting pleasures. True joy is more like a softly burning warm candle that lasts indefinitely rather than a massive conflagration that leaves as swiftly as it comes. Just google the “Stanford marshmallow experiment” to see that it’s been proven that one of our biggest weaknesses is the inability to delay gratification. If we can discipline and control that part of ourselves, we make it so we can’t be manipulated by others so easily.

Halfway through the book Mildred asks Montag why she should read, and he gives the only true response possible: “Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” (70). Bradbury doesn’t think it is only books that can lead us out of the cave, though. His character Faber shrewdly tells Montag to,

“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 together into one garment for us” (79).

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Beautiful thoughts can be found in movies, TV shows, paintings, music, the book of creation (nature) or just within your own self. After all, Christ tells us that the kingdom of God is within (Lk 17:21). We should endeavor to consume art that has real quality and delights our intellects, not dimwitted and soulless drivel. As Faber counsels, the three things we need to build a better culture are higher quality of information, to put more of our leisure time into thinking, and then use that thinking to change the world for the better. This is, in my view, the correct way to cure our society’s ills. I would add to it that we should try to make our attention spans longer by avoiding distractions and spending more time in silence. Our world is so full of noise and endless chattering, clanging, banging, rushing, hustle and bustle, etc. that it’s no wonder we’re crazy. St. Isaac of Nineveh teaches us to, “Love silence above everything else, for it brings you near to fruit which the tongue is too feeble to expound. First of all, we force ourselves to be silent, but then from out of our silence something else is born that draws us into silence itself.” Montag felt this effect of silence as he was floating down the river to freedom towards the end of the story (144).

            Bradbury has said that Fahrenheit 451 was a story about Montag falling in love with literature and this love propelled him to become more fully human and alive. This is what I feel that this special little book has done for my life and so this little essay is the story of my love for this book.  I think he packs in really deep philosophical, social, and spiritual messages into such an easily digestible and interesting, plot-driven story with such economy that it almost beggars belief. One of the wonderful motifs in the story is the championing of direct experience and independent thought in order to make our own unique mark on the world.

“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. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been here at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime” (155).

He also urges us to “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal” (156).

Like a good Christian he makes sure to tell us that we must do all this with humility – remember that we are dust. Don’t go around trying to change the world and then thinking you’re God’s gift to mankind – you’re nothing and to dust you shall return. Also in keeping with his faith is his indomitable hope, “some day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddam steam shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up” (163). We should do what Mr. Bradbury advises us to do, I think. We should devote ourselves to exercising our minds, thinking more often and more deeply and to not be ashamed to urge others to do so as well. We should avoid distractions and pay more attention to the bare world and other people. We should only consume and make the best art possible. Doing all this in a humble spirit and with much prayer might just change the world enough for war to be a thing of the past. I hope this book inspired you as much as it did me. It set me ablaze on a quest that I believe I have just barely begun and I look forward to the delightful years ahead as I continue to study and learn more and more.