The best way that I can describe Farenheit 451 is that this was a bizarrely enthralling read. The dystopian story and unconventional writing style of Ray Bradbury, keep the reader constantly on the edge of her/his seat. This book felt to me like a cross between George Orwell’s 1984 and Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men (although Bradbury did in fact acknowledge that he was inspired to write this novel by Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon). Farenheit 451 is certainly one of the most unusual novels I’ve ever read.
What I enjoyed most was how Bradbury masterfully developed the plot, by slowly peeling back layer after layer of the dystopian, futuristic world that the protagonist, Guy Montag, lives in, as he descends down a rabbit hole of chaos sparked (no pun intended) by his chance encounter one night with an inquisitive young girl, Clarisse McClellan, ostensibly his neighbor. The story is narrated in a way as if everything that transpires in this world is perfectly normal and even mundane, like the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening.
My minor critique of Farenheit 451 relates to two things. I found the ending somewhat abrupt and anticlimactic after persevering to the end of the story. I had somehow expected a more spectacular denouement. The other peccadillo I have with the story, is that at times I couldn’t quite comprehend all of the made-up jargon used by Bradbury. As a result sometimes I found myself losing the thread of the story for a page or two, and then picking it back up. On the one hand I applaud Bradbury’s creativity in imagining a story replete with its own unique vocabulary. However, on the other hand this made it more challenging to follow.
Overall I would highly recommend Farenheit 451, as it deserves to be included among the classics of dystopian literature such as We, 1984, I Who Have Never Known Men and Brave New World.
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