I need a good ongoing theme between Fahrenheit 451, and another short story,
basically what i need is a short story with a similar theme to F451...and there is soo many short stories,

something from the illustrated man would be great...

thanks

Ray has dealt with time travel atleast five stories come to mind. The Fox and the Forest. The Toynbee Convector as a what if. A Sound of Thunder, cause and effect. The Witch door. Another new one about a Time Machine in a Library, to visit/save Authors. in one More for the Road. I also remember another about children going into the past on Halloween, and losing themselves so they don't have to return to a future without holidays. I think that is in the Illustrated Man. post script Greg as for the ongoing theme connection with F-451, maybe the nuclear war , in The Other Foot, or The Last Night of the World. In the Fox in the Forest the couple did not want to return to the future to build more
"super-plus hydrogen bombs". There are three connections to some form of nuclear war reference simular to the city being bombed.

[This message has been edited by uncle (edited 11-15-2002).]

"Fahrenheit 451" is a kinder, gentler "Pillar of Fire"...which just gives you some idea of how violent "Pillar of Fire" is.

is Pillar of Fire a short story, is it in the Illustrated Man, im supposed to give in my sources by tommorrow, for now im using The Last Night of the World, with F451, but this pillar of fire sounds like what i need...

i hope its accessible for me
thanks
greg scott

It's a short story in "A Medicine for Melancholy".

Great story for comparison to F451. Good suggestion, Dandelion. I hadn't read it in years. Very good. Kind of haunting, really.

Deals with the burning of bodies (no more graveyards, ghastly practice) burning of ideas, imagination. While there is no fear, life seems hollow and incomplete.

"Pillar of Fire" can also be found in "S is for Space" as well as one of those recent "Classic Stories" collections combining stories from several collections. It should be readily accessible in short story form. Now, if you should happen to come across the book "Pillar of Fire and Other Plays," GRAB IT! It is *quite* rare!

thanks for the help i havent found it yet but im looking, sorry i couldnt thank yall sooner

I don't really see the connection between "Pillar of Fire" and Fahrenheit 451. I would rather refer to Usher II, which has a similar concern about the supression of "dangerous" writing.

In "Pillar of Fire" the suppression was of certain ideas and their physical manifestations (stories, graveyards, etc.) It was the resulting ignorance of the people which led to their cruel fate.

I see a strong link between the two (F451 and Pillar of Fire), as they both deal with the supression of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. The objective is ostensibly to promote human happiness, but the result is the supression of what it is to be human.

William James once wrote:

"There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses to positively account for are a genuine part of reality. They may, after all, be the best key to life's significance and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth." (Cited in "William James on Consciousness Beyond the Margin", by Eugene Taylor. Princeton University Press. p 86)

In Pillar of Fire, the main character seems to recognize the same reality in this passage:

"Dark is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is meant for contrast. You must fear, you hear? That has always been the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and fine big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Halloween masks and destroyer of pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make the night what it once was, the thing against which man built all his lanterned cities . . ."

The contrast he talks about is what makes life real. In James's quote, it is the same. We live in a dual world and efforts to suppress parts of the truth will lead to a superficial and incomplete humanity. This is also part of the argument Beatty uses in F451 to argue for censorship and the suppression of ideas. Whatever causes conflict, or sadness, or fear, must be done way -- burned by the firemen. In Pillar of Fire, fire is also the means by which "unpleasant" truths are extinguished -- they are burned up in the incinerators.

In F541, the effort to overcome this is by persons memorizing (in essence becoming) books. These books contain ideas essential to humanity. In Pillar of Fire, Lantry sees himself as embodying and sustaining these truths:

"I am Poe, he thought. I am all that is left of Edgar Allan Poe, and I am all that is left of Ambrose Bierce and all that is left of a man named Lovecraft, . . . All of these things am I. And now these last things will be burned. While I lived they still lived. While I moved and hated and existed, they still existed. I am all that remembers them. . ."

I think the themes of F451 and Pillar of Fire are strongly related to one another. The idea of the suppression of the unpleasant for supposedly "good" reasons, and the idea that ideas are kept alive in the memories of persons who refuse to forget, are both strong thematic elements in both books. The thematic links seem strong to me. In addition, the symbol of fire as the tool to destroy the unpleasant is also essentially the same.