Why should you read “Fahrenheit 451”? - Iseult Gillespie

3,658,769 views ・ 2019-01-22

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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“It was a pleasure to burn.
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It was a special pleasure to see things eaten,
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to see things blackened and changed.”
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Fahrenheit 451 opens in a blissful blaze - and before long,
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we learn what’s going up in flames.
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Ray Bradbury’s novel imagines a world
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where books are banned from all areas of life -
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and possessing, let alone reading them, is forbidden.
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The protagonist, Montag, is a fireman responsible for destroying what remains.
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But as his pleasure gives way to doubt,
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the story raises critical questions of how to preserve one’s mind in a society
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where free will, self-expression, and curiosity are under fire.
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In Montag’s world, mass media has a monopoly on information,
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erasing almost all ability for independent thought.
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On the subway, ads blast out of the walls.
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01:01
At home, Montag’s wife Mildred listens to the radio around the clock,
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and three of their parlor walls are plastered with screens.
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At work, the smell of kerosene hangs over Montag’s colleagues,
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who smoke and set their mechanical hound after rats to pass the time.
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When the alarm sounds they surge out in salamander-shaped vehicles,
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sometimes to burn whole libraries to the ground.
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But as he sets tomes ablaze day after day like “black butterflies,”
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Montag’s mind occasionally wanders to the contraband that lies hidden in his home.
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Gradually, he begins to question the basis of his work.
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Montag realizes he’s always felt uneasy -
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but has lacked the descriptive words to express his feelings in a society
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where even uttering the phrase “once upon a time” can be fatal.
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Fahrenheit 451 depicts a world governed
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by surveillance, robotics, and virtual reality-
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a vision that proved remarkably prescient, but also spoke to the concerns of the time.
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The novel was published in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
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This era kindled widespread paranoia and fear
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throughout Bradbury’s home country of the United States,
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amplified by the suppression of information and brutal government investigations.
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In particular, this witch hunt mentality
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targeted artists and writers who were suspected of Communist sympathies.
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Bradbury was alarmed at this cultural crackdown.
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He believed it set a dangerous precedent for further censorship,
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and was reminded of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria
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and the book-burning of Fascist regimes.
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He explored these chilling connections in Fahrenheit 451,
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titled after the temperature at which paper burns.
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The accuracy of that temperature has been called into question,
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but that doesn’t diminish the novel’s standing
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as a masterpiece of dystopian fiction.
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Dystopian fiction as a genre amplifies troubling features of the world around us
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and imagines the consequences of taking them to an extreme.
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In many dystopian stories,
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the government imposes constrictions onto unwilling subjects.
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But in Fahrenheit 451,
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Montag learns that it was the apathy of the masses
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that gave rise to the current regime.
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The government merely capitalized on short attention spans
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and the appetite for mindless entertainment,
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reducing the circulation of ideas to ash.
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As culture disappears, imagination and self-expression follow.
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Even the way people talk is short-circuited
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- such as when Montag’s boss Captain Beatty describes the acceleration of mass culture:
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"Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here,
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There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh!
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Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests.
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Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes!"
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In this barren world, Montag learns how difficult it is to resist when
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there's nothing left to hold on to.
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Altogether, Fahrenheit 451 is a portrait of independent thought
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on the brink of extinction -
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and a parable about a society which is complicit
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in its own combustion.
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