English Class - Fahrenheit 451
About the Author. Ray Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois.
He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947. His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. Ray Bradbury's work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary.
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted. WHEN THE PULITZER PRIZES were handed out in May during a luncheon at Columbia University, two special citations were given.
One went to John Coltrane (who died in 1967), the fourth time a jazz musician has been honored. The other went to Ray Bradbury, the first time a writer of science fiction and fantasy has been honored. Bradbury, a longtime Los Angeles resident who leads an active civic life and even drops the Los Angeles Times letters to the editor on his views of what ails his town, did not attend, telling the Pulitzer board his doctor did not want him to travel.
But the real reason, he told the L.A. Weekly, had less to do with the infirmities of age (he turns 87 in August) than with the fact that recipients only shake hands with Lee C. 451 and Censorship. “I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted to become a non-book.”
Ray Bradbury, Author’s Afterword, Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953 by Ballantine Books, immediately captured the reading public’s imagination. A shorter version in novella form, “The Fireman,” had appeared in 1951 in Galaxy, a science fiction magazine. The novel takes place in a society that bans books which, if discovered, are then burned by firemen. The protagonist, Montag, a fireman, progressively becomes a believer in the value of books. Ironically, Fahrenheit 451, an indictment of censorship, was itself censored by its publisher for thirteen years before Bradbury himself became aware of that.
In a novel of approximately one hundred and fifty pages, seventy-five passages were modified. The expurgations went unnoticed because readers did not compare this version to the original. In 1979, one of Bradbury’s friends showed him an expurgated copy. National Coalition Against Censorship. Fahrenheit Criticism. How TV Destroys Literature. Fahrenheit 451 SparkNotes. Fahrenheit 451: Plot Overview. Guy Montag is a fireman who burns books in a futuristic American city.
In Montag’s world, firemen start fires rather than putting them out. The people in this society do not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think independently, or have meaningful conversations. Instead, they drive very fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen to the radio on “Seashell Radio” sets attached to their ears. Montag encounters a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocently penetrating questions and her unusual love of people and nature.
Over the next few days, Montag experiences a series of disturbing events. When Montag fails to show up for work, his fire chief, Beatty, pays a visit to his house. Faber agrees to help Montag with his reading, and they concoct a risky scheme to overthrow the status quo. Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to Beatty. History Behind...