We Are the Firemen: The Mirror That Is Fahrenheit 451

It was a pleasure to burn.

Fahrenheit 451 is a classic dystopian novel. It tells the story of a society of the future, where books are illegal and the firefighters don’t put out fires, but rather burn the books. The story follows Guy Montag, a firefighter, who begins to rebel against the very society and systems that he is a part of.

I had never read this book before this year. I know some people my age used to read it in school, but I never did. It’s a chilling tale, and lauded for a reason. However, I think the warning of the book goes just beyond the obvious about totalitarian governments and the power of knowledge, and I was struck by Bradbury’s prose and some of the subtler themes of the novel.

In some ways, this is a book about knowledge. Who holds knowledge, who controls knowledge, the dangerous of knowledge, and power it can bring.

In the back of the Simon & Schuster 60th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, the author, Ray Bradbury explains how he got the title for the book. Bradbury writes:

And finally, how did I title this? Well, I called it all sorts of things along the way… But I didn’t like any of those titles. And then I asked myself, “Well what is the temperature that books catch fire and burn?” And I called the UCLA physics department, and I called the chemistry department. I called several other universities. Nobody knew, and nobody seemed to be able to look it up for me. And finally a light went on in my head, and I called the fire department. And I said, “Put me through to the fire chief.” I got hold of the fire chief here in Los Angeles, and I said, “At what temperature does book paper catch fire and burn?” He said, “Just a moment, be right back.” He came back and said, 451 Fahrenheit.”

It’s an interesting reflection when thinking that in the book, Bradbury made the fire department, the only ones who had the actual knowledge in real life, commit the burning instead of fighting the flames.

However, there are two other quieter themes that I think run through the novel that sit adjacent to the book burning theme: that of noise and that of happiness as the ultimate goal of humanity.

A Screaming

When people talk about science fiction of the past, they always talk about prescience. How close was the writer to predicting the future that came true? The vanilla, oft-repeated praise for Fahrenheit 451 is that is a chilling warning about governments trying to restrict information to keep people obedient. Hell, Bradbury even predicted wireless earphones and AirPods in his “audio-Seashells” that Montag’s wife wears constantly throughout the novel while watching her television dramas. But I think measuring prescience is a neat but ultimately shallow thing. I don’t really care how close the author was to predicting the future, what I care about is how insightful the author was in capturing how humans would act in the future that they imagine. That always the more interesting story, because now we see ourselves reflected.

In that I think Bradbury is a genius.

As I mentioned above, Montag’s wife, Mildred, is constantly watching her television dramas and constantly has the Seashells in her ears listening to the audio. She had no interests other than this and is so absorbed in this fake life and the soap opera of these other people that she doesn’t even remember that she overdosed on sleeping pills or when she met her husband.

At one point, when Mildred’s stomach is pumped after the overdose and she wakes up the next morning, there’s a passage of Montag thinking of her death, which remarks:

And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman… p.41

Mildred’s constant connection to the soap opera and the lack of any real relationship with her husband leads to this eerie false life that Montag begins to grow more and more uncomfortable with. Mildred’s soap opera is then tied to this idea of noise, and the idea that the noise is almost numbing in a way, suppressing any real thoughts or interactions because of its constant rumble.

Montag refers to the characters in the TV show as relatives because their presence is constant. At one point her refers to them as, “…the gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing, and said it loud, loud, loud.” p.41

If only Bradbury could see our society today, how noisy would he think it had become?

To me, the way Bradbury writes Montag’s discomfort at this noise and how his agitation grows throughout the book is almost more chilling than the book burning. Think of social media or the internet, the constant groan of noise that is filtered directly into our heads. There are many voices, many of which speak very loudly and say nothing. And I think our relationship to it is very much the same as Montag’s. It’s a screaming in his head, and it is something that makes us want to shut out the world around us, for better and for worse.

Up until early in the book, however, Montag was an upholder of this society. It wasn’t until a woman refused to leave her books and was burned along with them that he was jolted awake. After this, the noise of the drama became unbearable to him, and helped to trigger his decision to stand up against the system of oppression.

But it is this contrast of action and true knowledge to the endless, meaningless noise that struck me as so pertinent to our world of today.

Knowledge is (Un)Happiness

In the world of the book, books are largely illegal based on the premise that knowledge destroys happiness. The ultimate goal for the society in Fahrenheit 451 is happiness, and anything that brings discomfort is antithetical to that goal.

It is said throughout the story that books make you think about problems that don’t have solutions, or makes you start to question things, and then you’ll get all upset and unhappy because there is no answer. Of course, free thinkers are the biggest threat to totalitarian regimes, and so the government in the story does not want people thinking in this way.

When describing the role of the firemen, the fire chief Beatty says:

They were given a new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you Montag, and that’s me. p.56

But isn’t that just what we have today: custodians of our peace of mind? However, I would argue that the “custodians” are not there for our peace of mind, but there to influence how we think in general. Unlike the world of Fahrenheit 451, we do live in an information dense society. People know many things. However, our custodians come to us in the form of algorithms. We may know things, but we have outsourced much of our critical thinking to others. To the noise, if you will. In many ways, our happiness is still ignorance, and they don’t even have to burn the books to make us that way. In the overload, we are overwhelmed, and apathy reigns.

Bradbury’s prescience is in how understands how systems of control can create this feeling in humans. Why strive against something so oppressive and heavy when we can live in a perceived happiness? What I think Bradbury couldn’t have predicted was the sheer scale of the noise and the level at which his vision came true. If all we had was TV nowadays, many of us would think the times were so simple.

Knowledge as unhappiness is also an interesting concept when thinking about knowledge was seek out versus knowledge that we just come to know through a screen. To some degree the television was also this way, but again, I don’t think Bradbury could have seen that we would all have super-TVs in our pockets blaring information at us at all times. Today, we know of every war in every country. We see on the news every poor child who died of starvation or war or genocide, and every crime committed in a city.

Will you be less happy because you read Plato or Shakespeare? I would argue, no. But knowledge can definitely lead to unhappiness. And in a pre-internet society, the most powerful source of that knowledge would have been books. The people in the society of Fahrenheit 451 become scared of books as something that will disrupt their lives. Many times, characters remark that books don’t make sense so there’s no use in reading them. The perception of knowledge has changed, and that is the danger.

Of course, the truth is that no one is actually happy in this manufactured “utopia” of Bradbury’s world. They have everything they could ever want to hold their attention (Bradbury even predicted short form video in his idea that TV specials would be cut down to 15 minutes—oh the irony), but there is a pervasive emptiness to the characters. His wife is hollow, the fire chief wishes to die and doesn’t stop Montag from killing him. Early in the novel, Montag reflects on the modern idea of loneliness in this type of society when saying:

There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that’s too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. p.14

In this passage he is also reflecting on the men who came, who were not doctors, to pump Mildred’s stomach. It was like a drive-by service, hinting at the frequency of that sort of thing. But still, the idea that the more of us there are, the lonelier it is, is a very modern way of feeling. We are surrounded by all but embraced by none.

It was a pleasure to burn.

Knowledge is cleansed by fire in Fahrenheit 451, a ceremonial, nearly pyrophilic ritual. The book warns of a dystopian government, but it is more a warning about ourselves. There is an eerie sense in the book that the world only became this way because the everyday people allowed it, welcomed it even. They empowered the systems through their inaction and by embracing the utopia sold to them.

As we move closer and closer to a world completely dominated by technology, Bradbury’s dystopia is chilling to me not because it warns of totalitarian governments, but because it points to the qualities in ourselves that allow these type of societies to exist. There is no easier answer. We are left to participate in the systems set out for us in many ways or else suffer dire consequences. If you want to make money and feed your families and contribute, you must participate. No one likes Meta but we all have an Instagram. We hate big tech but we use their products every day. In many ways, it seems like there are few ways out.

Everyone should read this book because Fahrenheit 451 is a reminder of the fire we all hold. How close we bring it to the books, though, is still up to us. At least for now.

We are the firemen, but is it really a pleasure to burn?