Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a classic, dystopian book. The story takes place in the future, in a world where it is illegal to own books. Guy Montag works as a fireman, and his job is to burn books, and the houses in which those books are held. He has done this job for nearly 10 years and has never thought anything was wrong. He was just doing his job and helping his community. Outside of work, his life has been pretty dull, with his wife, Mildred, who spends all of her time with her “family,” or characters on her television. When Montag meets Clarisse, a young girl with a unique personality and perspective on the world, he begins to consider if everything in his life is truly how he wants it to be. With the help of Faber, a retired English teacher, Montag finds a way to rebel against the fire chief, his wife, and even the government. Montag is determined to find others who will join him in his cause as he fights back against the dystopian society he was once just as blindly living in.
I read this book in school. It is definitely not a book I would have normally read on my own, however, I did enjoy reading it. Since I read this book in school, I got to learn a lot more about the author and how much he was predicting the future. The author, Bradbury, did a very good job of observing the changes in technology that had already taken place in his society and developing ideas as to how this could evolve into the future. He had to carefully create a dystopian society that had no “expiration date” for his readers. He did this by never giving any details of a specific date or year in the future, but also including elements that would continue to relate to readers for generations into the future. For the most part, he was very accurate in his predictions, and he explained the new technologies in a way that could be interpreted differently depending on how things continued to change. I found this book very interesting, and I really enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading dystopian or futuristic books.