At first glance, Fahrenheit 451 reminded me of one of those books my elementary school once had. The covers felt a little like laminated paper (in my opinion), with corners sometimes rolled or overly-bent. The book blurb was overly vague and mystifying, and the empty space behind the dash behind the author’s birth year, indicated that the author was still alive, which made the book even more uniqueness. Everything was a completely different story once I read the first sentence of Fahrenheit 451; was it my imagination, or was the book in my hand really on fire?

Fahrenheit 451 truly gave me the feeling of being deep under sea; the plot urgent and nerve-jumping, leaving me gasping for more of that limited air. After reading this fantastic literary accomplishment, I believe that the theme for Fahrenheit 451 is “Not everyone can accept knowledge and truth”.

Before we delve deeper into the tangle that is the story, I guess we must brush of some things, perhaps some frayed or crusted edges. Here is a quote from the book:

“And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books’ (Bradbury 49)

What do books mean to our lives? Perhaps it is a cozy companion during a rainy evening on the weekends, each inked letter in the book imbued with an author’s purpose, emotion, and your finger overlapping the un-conspicuous little symbol embellished upon the corner of the paper ready for the next word, next sentence, next story (depends on the format of your book; maybe a fairytale?) to draw into your eyes by the simple gesture of a page-flip.

Those words (and these words right in front of you right now!) were all the rambunctious, rampaging thoughts and ideas of a man (or a woman; it’s best to be gender-neutral) that can only speak by arranging 26 different phonetic symbols (letters) into their little groups (words), which is also part of a bigger group (sentences), all stacked neatly with each-other (paragraphs!), complicated and not so complicated to a human brain that comprehends the information into meaning. (reading)

Then comes the disadvantage of this amazing ability, in which the author’s “purpose and meaning” don’t fit right, like a mismatched puzzle, into the reader’s collection of thought and “meaning and purpose”.

Another two excerpts from the book:

“We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought” (59).

 “ ‘Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. ‘” (63)

 Let us reference the above two quotes. The strands of our story are becoming a little tangled and knotted now, like the surface of a small walnut, rough with convoluted, twisty patterns.

Books (like I said before) hold the bias of a person’s mind, which can transmute into something ugly for others. From intended scintillating carousel lights thrown down to gorges of swamping raw sewage. Books are like auditioning candidates that can be immediately be “boo-ed” offstage, along with a few banana peels thrown after the scuttle off stage. We all look at life through different facets; but there will be forever others who see our aspect as distorted visions. But books in the universe of Fahrenheit 451, are gazed upon as evil, forever   feared, disgusting, incomprehensible. We can see that from this excerpt of the book:

” ‘Silly words, silly words, silly awful hating words!’ “ (103)

This is the part where Mrs. Bowles reacts to the poetry Montag has forced upon her and her friends to hear. Her friends (including Montag’s wife) all react in similar ways, wailing and weeping and sobbing and moaning about the poetry (a heritage of our long culture and histories!)

Some more:

“Mrs. Bowles stood up and glared at Montage. ‘You see? I knew it, that’s what I wanted to prove! I knew it would happen! I’ve always said poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings (…)” (103)

Now we can surely see that books indubitably meant “awful feelings” and jaded things in Montag’s world. We can see that not everyone can fully accept knowledge and that they are  procrastinating upon the handles of the door that open their feelings.

Our main character, Montag, is not the same. He seeks the knowledge and truth! The state of quandary he was in before completely ends when he joins the others in the outskirts of the city.

“Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them (…) and these men had seemed no different than any others who had run a long race, (…)seen good things destroyed, and now, very late, were gathered to wait for the end of the party and the blowing out of the lamps.” (157)

(Wow! That was a long quote!)

Additionally, after reading Fahrenheit 451, it strongly reminded me of the book “Monstrous” by Kate Connolly. Even though these two books are almost complete different genres (one dystopian, one fantasy), but the main character go through same experiences. The main character, Kymera, a wild science experiment (semi-human, bird, and dragon) wakes up with no memories left from her previous life, seeks her past (Montag, the future) by visiting the village residing next to an old wizard’s lab. Soon, the villagers find out about her backstory and truth (her human-part self was a kind princess who died saving the village from the old wizard, but she was manipulated to kidnap and kill girls thinking it was a “good deed”), viciously attacking her and isolating her, until she is exiled. Kymera returns to the village once more when the old wizard attacks the village, destroying the village into rubble. In some ways, they are similar. The theme was almost exactly the same for both, and the endings were similar.

In conclusion, I believe that the theme for Fahrenheit 451 is “Not everyone can accept knowledge and truth”. Hard as reality and truth can be (un-harvesting and awfully quick; sometimes I imagine it as if it was shining the flashlight through a vacant dark, the only eye-catching are the spiraling dust motes and the hard ground beneath you), I believe we can all find our path of Christmas lights, to accompany us through the hard enduring.