Burn the Life Unlived!: Ray Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451" (Part 2)

Link to Part 1: http://ed-is-a-stranger-on-earth.blogspot.nl/2012/12/burn-life-unlived-ray-bradburys.html

Bradbury himself once remarked in an interview that Fahrenheit 451 was not a writer’s protest against totalitarianism. [+] The fact that the novel is often interpreted as such speaks volumes about its multi-facetedness. The writer’s intention, however, lies in a different sphere: he aims to alert the reader to the soul-flattening addictiveness of visual media and their threat to the existence of books.

When Montag encounters the novel’s chief voice of reason Faber, who has an extensive literary knowledge, he learns from him the true worth of books. In reference to the last surviving copy of the Bible Montag has stolen and kept, Faber says:

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture, This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more “literary” you are. (108)

Faber’s appreciation of books is unambiguously expressed. He has a tactile connection with them, feels their “texture” and “pores,” and believes that they are capable of (truthfully) recording life as it is. Books function as archives of human existence; without them, we would not know ourselves. Faber says that books are hated and feared because “they show the pores in the face of life” (108). Totalitarian regimes can never abide such a confrontational truth. Books are therefore the first to go up in flames when political power corrupts absolutely.

Faber does not comment on how totalitarian regimes deal with books. Instead he directs Montag’s attention to society’s gnawing hunger for speed and ease. This is where the novel suddenly acquires a contemporary tone, resonating with today’s readers, who are of course no strangers to digital overload. Montag says people have a lot of “off-hours” (leisure time). Faber responds:

“Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is ‘real’. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest…” (109)

Bradbury’s prophetic vision is of course no longer science fiction to the reader of the 21^st century. If anything, it is now his everyday reality. Faber’s point about the hypnotising power of the visual medium is confirmed later on in the novel when a random pedestrian instead of Montag is arrested on camera to appease the viewers at home, who have been slavishly following the chase (a passage whose composition conjures up images of the OJ Simpson hunt). Montag is now convinced the people have been brainwashed by the media to behave and think only in ways acceptable to those in charge politically, recalling that his wife used to say that books were not real, and that “only the ‘family’ is ‘people’,” the “family” being soap opera characters (109). Montag’s association with Faber, his only ally in a world of somnambulists, pushes him towards a re-evaluation of himself:

Already in a few short hours, it seemed that he had known Faber a lifetime. Now he knew that he was two people, that he was above all Montag, who knew nothing, who did not even know himself a fool, but only suspected it … His mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag any more, this the old man told him, assured him … He would be Montag-plus-Faber … And one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool. Even now he could feel the start of the long journey, the leave-taking, the going away from the self he had been. (133)

The reader is witnessing the awakening of a “fool,” one who has been asleep for too long. The journey to self-awareness – or re-education – will not be without its obstacles. By divorcing himself from the masses who have been bewitched by false knowledge, he becomes a renegade – he starts living a life of meaning. The final section of the novel, despite its apocalyptic dénouement, depicts the possibility of the phoenix rising again from its ashes. The underground renegades all possess bits and pieces of literary knowledge, and will, when peace reigns once more, emerge and restore them to the written page. Montag thinks to himself: “To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up” (210-11). True knowledge can never be suppressed, despite the omnipresence of technological manipulation, for it is the fate of the human race to safeguard it.

[+] Bradbury claimed his whole life that readers of Fahrenheit 451 had always misinterpreted its central message: http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. London: Harper Voyager, 2008.