Living F451
A journey of finding self knowledge
About
The book Fahrenheit 451 changed the way I saw myself and the world. If you get into any story enough, it is going to do that. An avid Star Wars/Trek fan is going to think of Hyperspace or Warp-speed when they drive (or run) on a snowy night. A person who has read Dune is going to drink water and experience walking on sand differently from someone who has not. Watching Chariots of Fire and reading Unbroken are going to change the way you hear the sound of a starting gun, the rhythm of feet, and the roar of a crowd.
Fahrenheit 451 did these kinds of things for me. But more. Reading Fahrenheit 451 altered the shape of my soul.
In Neil Gaiman’s introduction to the 60th anniversary edition, it says this:
“If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they try to tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong. Any story is about a host of things” (qtd. in Bradbury xii).
So those stories I mentioned above are about more than high speed space travel, water, sand, and running. But one of the things that makes F451 so powerful is that the topics it covers are so widely spread across all life experiences. It’s about loneliness and community. Spending time with good friends. It is about introspection and repression; deepness and superficiality. It is about knowledge and ignorance. The dangers of technology. The call of the wilderness.
Fahrenheit 451 is about when you read or hear something that describes a thing that you think only you have experienced. In other words, it is about the importance of living a literate life.
Whenever I experience these things, I am reminded of the crackle of embers, the burning of pages, the sweet, nostalgic smell of kerosene.
