How accurately does this novel reflect events in history? What people, ideas and events probably influenced this author?
This is another novel that can be ranted about when books are said to depict the future. I can totally see our society becoming just like this society, many, many years in the future. Obviously, Bradbury saw something in our society that drove him to write the story. I mean, his ideas didn't just come from nowhere. He had to have influences from somewhere, so to a certain extent, the futuristic society is partially in our society today. I believe that Bradbury was influenced to write out of fear. He must have been able to see somehow (psychic?) what our world was coming to, and he had to get his ideas out somehow. But at the same time, he didn't want to sound crazy. There are enough crazy people in the world, we don't need one writing books about it (that's a hint Al Gore). Bradbury was able to put his ideas and thoughts out through writing, and he concealed them inside a great novel.
In the novel, Bradbury depicted a relationship between the common person and the government. The people were not allowed to read books, but someone must have been to decide that they were illegal. The government in this story decided that books were not to be read by common people, but only by them. Our government today sometimes does the same thing. They think that they can decide what we need to know and what we don't, and that is so not true.
I said in a few of my previous blogs that authors such as Orwell and Bradbury must be psychic. That really is a silly thing to say, but they are able to see things that we can't see. They are also able to put what they see into a story in a way that we can draw our own conclusions and see it for ourselves. Bradbury was influenced by society to write this book, because he saw a problem that not many others saw in the world.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1953. Print.
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