fahrenheit 451

in the distant future where minds are cocooned, firemen who doused flames once in the past burn books. fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns, hence the title. literature, knowledge and information is kept away from the reach of people who are shackled without their knowledge with ‘entertainment’. desensitized people are after all very easy to control. a society sown with these seeds grows to self-destruct. like a classroom that bullies a boy because he is different, the people themselves make sure the ones that still read are burnt with their books. ray bradbury paints a very bleak future which is shockingly similar to the society we are in currently where the idiot box and its reality shows cheap thrills entertainment and local news pumps in paranoia day after day. the words come out of the book in a frenzy like bullets from a machine gun, strong and powerful. it feels like the tale you are reading had to be told in a hurry. turns out that the first draft of the book was written in 9 days with a typewriter rented for a dime for half hour by the poor writer then. this is a must read for everyone. its a celebration for books and reading and writing and knowledge and freewill. let me wrap this with one of my favorite passages from the book (every page has one atleast).

about mortality and individuality..

“Everyone must leave something in the room or be left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. 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 there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”