Ray Bradbury was born in 1920 in Illinois and died in 2012 in Los Angeles where he was buried at the age of 91. He married at 27 and had four daughters. As his family was poor during the Great Depression he couldn’t afford to go to college so he started selling newspapers and went to libraries three days a week for ten years. He said : « Librairies raised me…. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. » He started writing very early and found his inspiration in the reading of H. G. Wells and J. Verne and many more.
He became an American author and screenwriter, he wrote an adaptation for the cinema of It Came From Outer Space and Moby Dick. He published his first famous novel Martian Chronicles in 1950 and then Farenheit 451 in 1953. Many of his books were adapted in television and film productions or comic books. His works belong to fantasy, science fiction, horror or realistic fiction.
He wrote Farenheit 451 during the Mc Carthy era (late 1940’s and 1950’s) and was inspired by book burnings in Nazi Germany (WWII). His work is a « novel of the future » or what is called a dystopia or a depiction of what the author feared most. Bradbury was deeply concerned with thought control and freedom of speech. The novel illustrates an oppressive government trying to eliminate books so as to introduce a severe state-based censorship. Right from the beginning the reader has the explanation of the title : « Fahrenheit 451: the temperature book-paper catches fire and burns ». The book is divided into three parts I quote : "The Hearth and the Salamander", "The Sieve and the Sand", and "Burning Bright".
The protagonist is a fireman called Guy Montag who is in charge of burning books and their owner’s house to allow people to find happiness. Montag meets Clarisse, a free-spirited and open-minded young woman who inspires him ; she changes his mind when she asks him if he is happy and he ends up being a rebel against the state. Montag’s wife Mildred is in great pain and attempts to commit suicide. She appears cold and distant, almost dehumanized. She is addicted to television and is unable to think by herself.
In his quest for happiness Montag meets an old English teacher Faber who explains to him that people must learn again how to understand books and learn from them. Montag tries to read poetry to his wife and her friends but they are very upset and Mildred eventually denounces her husband who has to burn down his home. Montag is arrested and kills his boss Beatty ; then he escapes the town following the railroad tracks but he is chased by a mechanical hound. In the end Montag is declared dead by a TV announcer and a rebel, called Granger, explains that the rebels’ mission to save mankind is to memorize classic pieces of literature. They learn that a bomb has been dropped onto the city and they get ready to help the survivors and rebuild a new city from ashes.
