Ok. I read it in 9th grade. What it made me think about was the concept that ideas mattered. Prior to that, a world defined by ideas seemed irrelevant. F451 taught me that a world of thought was a world that was truly human. This had not occurred to me before.
okay...i'll respond, i read F451 about a year ago for the first time. i'm 19...hopefully that qualifies me as a member of the "new generation." i adored it...i have read a bunch of bradbury since and that is the one that got me started. i'll tell you what it made me think. it made me realize what the future of this society is coming to, a bunch of mindless idiots watching horrific dribble on a flat screen that cost more than some people make in a year. that we are becoming so easily amused by things like 'survivor' and 'friends' that we have forgotten to occasionally use that big mass of gray in our skulls. don't get me wrong, i love my reality tv, but i don't appreciate being harassed because i like to go to the library or grab a book instead of the remote.
bradbury took my world and showed me parts of it i didn't realize existed. at the end of the book he talks about building a mirror factory and that is how i felt after reading it.
the imagery he uses moves me in ways i didn't know possible, the way he writes is inspirational beyond belief...there is no one like him and i honestly feel like a better person for having read that book.
Couldn't agree more. Loved reading your entry. I am always renewed when I see young people turned on to ideas and the mind and creativity and real life when they're turned on by something cool that they read. Interesting how often that "something cool" is something by Bradbury!
Good stuff! For me, it really got me thinking specifically about the thought of ideas BEING people, (and vice versa) to the point where the person is defined by his ideas, just as he exists through them, just as he defined them in the first place (and they exist through him). That is how a person can live forever. That is how Ray will live forever. Hope that all makes sense...
thank you all for your replies! mr. dark, i'm glad you liked my entry! it's just that i have never been so moved by any piece of literature like i was when i read fahrenheit 451. there is something about the way bradbury writes that makes the words leap of the page and fall over you like a waterfall over the edge of a cliff, it's insane, it gives me goosebumps just to think of his writings!
f451 brings to life the fears i have about our society and the direction it is headed in. i wonder if we, as a people, can survive if we stop using our own minds and let machines and the television do it all for us. i agree with you groon, i think that people must be defined by the ideas we have, if not that, then what else is there? i only pray that bradbury lives on for hundreds of years to come, if not for the poetics in his writing, then most certainly for the themes and ideas it provokes in all who read it.
fjpalumbo, i enjoyed your entry, very lovely. i haven't read either though...but i am looking for something new to dig into, suggestions?
I as well have just read F451 on my own and chose to do a term paper on the novel. It is the type of novel to make you think. Anyone that has read the book can say the book made them think.
I could probably write a 30 page paper on the different ways it made me think and reevaluate myself and our society, but there is one point in particular i'll mention..
Last quarter in my communications class I learned about how most of the media content we consume is controlled by as little as 6 major companies. The media tries to feed us useless information so we go on info overload and ignore issues that really matter (political, social, environmental issues).
We badmouth political mudslinging and trashy negative campaigning, but when it comes down to it, we'd rather hear about Monica Lewinsky than social security or the national debt.
It seems that people are slowly becoming more aware, but still not doing anything to change the way things are going.
Everything I've learned so far in college just makes it seem that any effort to change society now would be short lived if not completely futile, but I'd like to think that isn't true.
Bradbury seems to promise a bittersweet optimism at the end of F451...
I just wonder what I can do about it.
Posts: 4 | Location: los angeles, ca, usa | Registered: 21 February 2004
