By Ray Bradbury

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Fahrenheit 451

• By Ray Bradbury

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"You don't have to burn books to destroy a
culture. Just get people to stop reading
them.Ray BRADBURY
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Fahrenheit 451

• The temperature at which book paper catches fire
  and burns

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Ray Bradbury Who?

• Born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920.
• His family moved frequently when he was young,
  but they finally settled in Los Angeles (1934).
• As a young boy, Bradbury was interested in magic
  and had aspirations of becoming a magician. This
  interest in magic later turned into a love for
  writing.
• Began writing stories at age eleven. He received
  no formal education beyond high school (1938).

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His Work

• Weird Tales, a famous pulp science fiction
  (1940).
• The Martian Chronicles, launched his writing
  career (1950).
• Most famous to date is Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
• Pub. over 500 short stories, novels, plays, and
  poems in his career

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His Work

• wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents The
  Twilight Zone, the screenplay for John Hustons
  Moby Dick
• helped design Spaceship Earth ride for Disney
  Worlds EPCOT Center

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Bradburys Writing Style

• science fiction writer
• fiction based on scientific discoveries, space
  travel, time travel, alien existence or great
  environmental changes
• often deals with the future lives of humans and
  events that did not happen or have not happened
  yet.
• often takes into consideration how these events
  may have consequences on the human race

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The Beginning

• It began as story about a fireman, GUY MONTAG in
  a short story The Fireman
• 1953 expanded into the novel
• Classified as science fiction
• But it is SO MUCH MORE

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A criticism

• Personal
• Public

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Personal Criticism

• To protest what Bradbury believed to be the
  invasiveness of editors
• Editors had strict control of books printed
• Bradbury felt it impaired originality and
  creativity of writers

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• Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing,
  taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes,
  and having fun.
• Mary Lou Cook

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Social Criticism

• Warns against the danger of suppressing thought
  through censorship
• Oppressive government, left unchecked, can do
  irreparable damage to a society by limiting
  creativity of its people
• dystopia order and harmony at the expense of
  individual rights

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• If they give you ruled paper, write the other
  way.Juan Ramon Jimenez

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Themes

• Themes are the fundamental and often universal
  ideas explored in a literary work

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Fahrenheit 451 Themes

• Knowledge versus Ignorance
• Destroy knowledge to promote ignorance
• Search for knowledge destroys ignorance
• Conformity versus Individuality
• Conforming to the norms of our society
• What are the norms of our society?
• Does it endanger societys well-being?
• Does it help our society?
• Censorship

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Censorship

• A person authorized to examine books, films, or
  other material to remove or suppress what is
  considered morally, politically, or otherwise
  objectionable.
• An official, as in the armed forces, who examines
  personal mail and official dispatches to remove
  information considered secret or a risk to
  security.
• One that condemns or censures.

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Time of the novelcensorship

• Fahrenheit 451 released in 1953
• Senator Joseph McCarthy
• Leading witch hunt to find suspected Communist
  sympathizers in govt, writers, moviemakers, and
  performers
• Most findings unfounded
• Ruined careers of many people because of link
  with Communism
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller

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McCarthyism

• Red Channels A 1950 publication documenting
  "Communist influence in radio and television"

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• Herblock coined the term "McCarthyism" in this
  cartoon in the March 29, 1950 Washington Post

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A Few of the Accused

• Leonard Bernstein, composer conductor
• Charlie Chaplin, actor
• Bartley Crum, attorney
• W.E.B. DuBois, civil rights activist author
• Langston Hughes, author
• Arthur Miller, playwright and essayist
• Clifford Odets, author
• J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, "father of the
  atomic bomb

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More Accused

• Paul Robeson, actor, athlete, singer, author,
  political civil rights activist
• Edward G. Robinson, actor
• Waldo Salt, author
• Pete Seeger, folk singer
• Artie Shaw, jazz musician
• Howard Da Silva, actor
• Paul Sweezy, economist founder-editor of
  Monthly Review
• Tsien Hsue-shen, physicist
• Orson Welles, actor, author director

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Let us Travel back in historyto censorship
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• The great eventful Present hides the
• Past
• but through the din of its loud life,
• hints and echoes from the life behind,
• steal in.
• John Greenleaf Whittier

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• People are trapped in history, and history is
  trapped in them. 
• James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

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• In "The Book of Abraham", "written by Himself",
  published in Boston - for the purchaser- in 1846,
  the following woodcut is used as a frontispiece

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Europe had a solution for the menacing spread of
knowledge as depicted in the engravings below .
. A 16th century wood block by Jost Amman
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Burned at the stakeRidley Latimer October 16,
1555

• Latimer, who lived and died unmarried, eased out
  of this world. But it was not so with his friend
  Nicholas Ridley. The wood being piled too high,
  he screamed for his bystanders to pull off some
  of the wood. Misunderstanding him, his
  brother-in-law, added more sticks to the fire.
  The fire "burned clean all his nether parts,
  before it once touched the upper and that made
  him often desire them to let the fire come unto
  him". He exclaimed, I cannot burn!. When he
  turned to his watchers, they saw a ghastly sight.
  "After his legs were consumed he showed that side
  towards us clean, shirt and all untouched with
  flame". Finally, a bystander pulled the wood
  from the fire, and the fire flamed to his face,
  igniting the gunpowder. And he stirred no more.
  And as hundreds of bystanders looked on at these
  two motionless bodies, all that could be heard
  was weeping.

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(No Transcript)
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NEW YORKv.JOHN PETER ZENGER(1735)

• the freshest advises, foreign and domestic
• 1st pub. 1733
• Zenger criticized the government
• Related news about the colonies

The New York Weekly Journal
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"The greater the truth, the greater the libel."

• John Peter Zenger was arrested and charged with
  seditious libel -- an English law prohibiting the
  publishing of statements intended to bring into
  contempt or excite dissatisfaction against the
  government.
• Any published criticism of the government, even
  if true
• The problem confronting Zenger was that the truth
  was no defense to libel at that time
• Andrew Hamilton was Peters lawyer

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Hamilton said to the court

• Men who injure and oppress the people under
  their administration provoke them to cry out and
  complain and then make that very complaint the
  foundation for new oppressions and prosecutions.

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• by an impartial and uncorrupt verdict, have laid
  a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our
  posterity, and our neighbors that to which nature
  and the laws of our country have given us a right
  -- and liberty -- both of exposing and opposing
  arbitrary power ... by speaking and writing
  truth....

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• Despite clear instructions from the judge to the
  contrary, the jury found Zenger innocent of all
  charges.
• This case was instrumental in establishing the
  framework for the American concept, Freedom of
  the Press.

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An 18th century frontispiece for a French
religious work 
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An 18th century French etching
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Nazi Book Burning

• May 10, 1933

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Nazi Germany and the book burning
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• One way the Nazis cleansed the country of
  "un-German" thoughts was through censorship. A
  "brown shirt" (member of the SA) throws some more
  fuel--"un-German" books-- into a roaring fire on
  the Opernplatz in Berlin. May 10, 1933.

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In Berlin

• 20,000 books were burned during a student rally
• The suppression of free speech and ideas was a
  tactic of Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of
  Propaganda.
• Target this time was anti-Nazi, Jewish-authored,
  and so-called "degenerate" books, but it would
  escalate

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• "Where they have burned books,they will end in
  burning human beings."Heinrich Heine

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• Someone must read a book to say that it is
  dangerousyes?

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• Where do we see censorship in our own lives?

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Back to Fahrenheit 451
Let us refresh our memory on the themes before we
progress to motifs
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Themes

• Themes are the fundamental and often universal
  ideas explored in a literary work

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Fahrenheit 451 Themes

• Knowledge versus Ignorance
• Destroy knowledge to promote ignorance
• Search for knowledge destroys ignorance
• Conformity versus Individuality
• Conforming to the norms of our society
• What are the norms of our society?
• Does it endanger societys well-being?
• Does it help our society?
• Censorship

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Motifs

• Recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
  devises that can help to develop and add to the
  texts major themes

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Fahrenheit 451 Motifs

• Paradoxes
• For ex I am not really here to be physically
  in a space, but, emotionally you are somewhere
  else
• For ex to be living, but, at the same time, be
  spiritually dead
• Animal and Nature Imagery
• Nature force of innocence and truth
• Animal ironic (society ignores nature, but
  perpetuates devises modeled after animals)

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Motifs continued

• Religion
• Enameled faces of statues compared to permanent
  smiles of firemen
• Christian value of forgiveness
• Ref miracle of Canaa Christ turned water into
  wine (one of miracles to try and prove his
  identity)
• Fire (Christian beliefs) pagan, divine
  presence
• In 451 starts out as the vehicle of a
  restrictive society
• Then it is turned on the oppressor

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Symbols

• Objects, characters, figures, or colors used to
  represent abstract ideas or concept

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Fahrenheit 451 Symbols

• Blood
• Symbol of human beings repressed soul or primal,
  instinctive self
• The snake machine
• The Hearth and the Salamander
• Hearth (fireplace, heats the home) symbolizes
  home
• Salamander (official symbol of firemen)
• Ancient beliefs that it lives in fire is
  unaffected by flames
• fire

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Symbols continued

• The Sieve and the Sand (recollection of a
  memory as a child at the beach)
• Sand tangible truth Montag seeks
• Sieve human mind seeking truth that remains
  allusive (not able to grasp in any permanent way)
• The Phoenix (rebirth)
• Mankind burns itself up then rises out of the
  ashes again again
• Cyclical nature of history
• Montags spiritual resurrection

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Symbols continued

• Mirrors
• Self-understanding
• Seeing oneself clearly

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The Characters

• Guy Montag protagonist, 30 yrs old fireman who
  makes his living by burning books the houses
  where the books are kept illegally.
• Experiences a drastic change in the novel
• Mildred Montag married to Montag for 10 yrs,
  epitomizes shallowness and complacentness of
  society
• Clarrise McClellan 17 yr. old girl Montag is
  drawn to her, opposite of Millie embodies what
  is positive about the human spirit

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More Characters

• Captain Beatty antagonist head of the Fire
  Dpt. whose sole purpose is to destroy books big
  brother character
• Professor Faber aging intellectual in a world
  where seems no place for him, disapproves of
  society but lacks courage gives Montag
  inspiration
• Granger intellectual former author leader of
  group of hobos takes Montag under his wing.

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More Characters

• Mechanical Hound terrible triumph of modern
  technology programmed to track down and destroy
  any victim that his sensors are set to
• Mrs.Phelps Mrs.Bowles Millies friends just
  as ignorant and silly as she is

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Fahrenheit 451

• By Ray Bradbury

The adventure begins!