Too hot to handle

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

3 words:
dread, dystopian, thought-provoking

Anyone
else avoid some books like the plague, and then one day you’re ready for them?

Me, too.

It’s
embarrassing to admit, but I’d never read Fahrenheit
451 until last month.

And
about halfway through, I felt so uncomfortable and ill at ease, I knew why I’d
waited.

I don’t
do well with dystopia situations, guys.        

So
probably everyone knows the set-up here: books are forbidden, and firemen set
fire to any books they find.

I know!!
It’s horrific.

So even
though I knew what to expect, the thing that surprised me was the intensity of the
feeling of dread. It was overwhelming. That thing happened, where I just thank
my lucky stars that I wasn’t born into a totalitarian society.

And the
other thing that surprised me was Bradbury’s anticipation of the tyranny of the
screen. In this book, interactive television is more emotionally significant to
many of the characters than the actual human beings in their lives. And that
was a little bit creepy, too—that he could foresee that so many people would be
overinvolved with the digital representations of reality that their actual
lives would waste away.

And
toward the end of the book, when Montag frees himself from the dictates of
society, there is an immense feeling of relief and rebirth, even though his
life has just become more complex and difficult. He’s become a human being
again. And I felt jubilant.

I’ve
always known this book was a contemporary classic, but now I know why.