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1.) Summary: /
The book "Fahrenheit 451", written by Ray Bradburry in the year 1953, is about a \"fireman\'s\" growing dissatisfaction with his conformist society. It takes place in the USA
In this negative vision of the future the role of firemen has changed. In the past all houses got fire-proofed, so instead of preventing fires, firemen burn the despised books.
Books promote the individual and are the symbol for unhappiness in this society. Everyone who owns books is promptly sent to jail.
The protagonist Guy Montag is a thirty-year-old fireman experiencing an intellectual awakening during the book.
For ten years he has protected the sanity and the comfort of the community by setting fire to books.
Montag lives with his wife Mildred in the suburbs of a large city.
Mildred does not pay much attention to their marriage, she prefers to spend all her time with her 3 TV walls, so she can be surrounded by the characters she watches and interacts with, everyday.
One evening, after having taken great pleasure in bruning a house full of dangerous books, Montag meets his neighbour, the 17-year-old Clarisse MCClellan. In contrast to Mildred, she is interested in Montag and asks for his feelings.
Clarisse has got another attidude to books, she does not see the danger and influences Montag with her thoughts, so that Montag takes a book with himself to have look in it.
Clarisse disappears and Montag discovers his feelings for her. He worries about her and connects all the lines he reads, to her.
He discerns the true value of books and decides to stop working as a fireman.
Mildred finds out about him reading books and wants him to stop reading and burn them.
Montag does not and meets the revolutioned english profesor Faber.
They plan to fight against this society to free the individual but they fail.
In the end Montag joins a group of outlaws.
2.) Themes:
Role of marriages:
à they do not play an important role in this society, everyone is married but
It's more like a business commitment
à No real feelings/Love
à Alienation
Role of books: à Society claims, books are full of lies
à they spread too much feelings/people can't handle them
à they promote brutality
à burn the individual
à everyone has to be equal
à nobody is allowed to be more intellegent than the rest
Role of TV: à Manipulation of thoughts
à Tells you what to think
à TV show "family" is more important than the real family
à Religion as entertainment
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of loneliness: à no real friends
à no deep conversations
à no trust/love
Image
of happiness: à Everyone wants to be happy
à No individuality à NO ENVY
à Entertainment
à people receive only positive information
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of time: à Firemen burned history à BOOKS
à Sun burns time
à everything gets burned
Biography of Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is born on August,22 ,1920 in Waukegan/Illinois. He, his mother Esther Maria Moberg Bradbury and his father Leonard Spaulding Bradbury settled to Los Angeles where Bradbury at the LA High School in 1938 graduated. He spend his youth at the library with writing and reading He starts writing about nightware and terror fantasies already at the age of twelve. 1943 he works as a free author. "The Martian Chronicles" is one of his most famous works. It reflects, like the most of his works, Fahrenheit 451 too, some of the prevailing anxieties of America in the early 50`s, for example: nuclear war, reactions against racism and cenorship.
Futhermore Ray Bradbury wrote the basic scenario for the U:S. Pavilion at the NY worlds fair in 1969. Moreover he contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney (France).
He won many awards like the "Writers Association Award "or the "Science Fiction Writers Award".
Ray Bradbury currently lives in LA and is still actively writing and lecturing.
Characters:
Guy Montag is the main protagonist of the book. At the beginning of the novel, Guy Montag is happily employed as a fireman, burning all books and not questioning anything about his role as a tool of thought suppression. There are two things made him thinking about what he is doing and realizing what is wrong in his life. First, he meets an old man in the park, who is Faber. After talking with him, Montag begins hiding books in his house. Secondly, he meets Clarisse and talk to her, while that he notice how different she is.
Clarrise McClellan is the seventeen-year old neighbour of Guy Montag. She doesn't behave like her fellow men. She is vastly alienated from society. After the meeting with Montag, Clarrise is hit by a speeding car and killed. Montag didn't know about that tragedy.
Captain Beatty is the chief fireman of the department where Montag is working. He is convinced of books being evil. Although he has a vast knowledge of literature. Beatty is full of contradictions. On the one hand his speeches are full of irony and sarcasm and on the other hand they are full of passion and regret.
Mildred is the wife of Guy Montag. She is fed on the entertainment and soap operas.She doesn't show any emotions to her husband. She doesn't show any participation in him but she reacts badly when she found out, that Montag is interested in reading books.
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