Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

 “Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in a factory.”

“The difference between the man who just mows lawns and the gardener is in the touching. The lawn mower might just as well not have been there at all. The gardener will be there a lifetime.”

 

 Everybody was in a rush, so the dew on the grass, the sensation of rain in the skin and the sunrise were insignificant details to most people in Farenheit 451, but Clarisse McClellan appreciated them.  She liked to go for walks and enjoyed watching nature. She observed people. She knew interesting facts about the past. Clarisse was spontaneous and curious, and, unlike her peers, she rejected violence, but in the Farenheit 451 society, Clarisse was considered creepy and crazy.

 Books are banned and burned. They are considered a dangerous source of useless ideas. The liberal arts no longer exist. Critical thinking skills, knowledge and empathy are suppressed and disregarded. Books can ignite controversy, so those who try to read them are arrested.

 In Farenheit 451 people are dumbed and numbed by television and technology. It is a mechanical society that has no clue about its history, and is not even aware of the extreme poverty in other parts of the world.

 When Montag, her neighbor, met Clarisse during her walks, he felt irritated at first. Montag thought she was a peculiar teenager. She was not considered normal by the societal standards. Normal teenagers in Farenheit 415 are expected to be violent.

 In Farenheit 451 people kill each other for nothing.

 Clarisse enjoyed meaningful conversations, and she was curious about Mr. Montag’s life. Why did he burn books? He was a fireman, but technology had created fireproof homes, so firemen were hired to burn books instead. Gone were the days when firemen were expected to put out fires in homes, and Montag was not even aware of that historical fact.

   Clarisse planted a seed of transformation in Montag. She asked him questions that made him feel uncomfortable and kindled a sense of wonder in him: he opened up to the idea of unlocking the hidden world of books. Clarisse sparked a new light of awareness for him.

 Montag refused to continue working as a fireman.

  Montag escaped from his stagnant existence and meaningless occupation to rescue the soul of the books, and new perspectives delineated the beginning of a different life. 

   What kind of life would that be?

   Throughout the story multiple artists and literary authors are referenced; they were all male. Then I realized Ray Bradbury wrote the book in the year 1951. In those days it was normal to highlight the works of men, not women…At least, he mentioned Emily Dickinson in the foreword of the edition of the book published in the year 1993.

  Farenheit 451 left me in awe; the book is relevant today on so many levels…

    Yes, I do make the time to volunteer to create a space of awareness, reflection, inspiration. If you feel connected to Clarisse McClellan in more ways than one, you are not alone. Welcome to My Writing Life blog, and thank you for reading.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to read my writing on the following posts:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Island by Aldous Huxley

The Handmaid’sTale by Margaret Atwood

 

 

"1984" by George Orwell

"Of course the people do not want war... But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. " German Field Marshall

 A reader of this blog took the time to e-mail me the post I deleted by accident. Thank you , Claire. I appreciate your time and cooperation.

 Today I’m publishing my post on “1984” again, with a few “upgrades”.

  If there is something about the plot and/or characters that offends somebody, please bear with it. George Orwell is now dead so you can’t bully the author. Excuse my sense of humor here. I know, I know. Women are not expected to have this kind of sense of humor (unless they use it to pester a woman who opposes the bully in power).

 Thankfully, I’m married to a man who loves my sense of humor.

 Do people get annoyed by the use of pen-names? Hopefully not because George Orwell is a pen-name. Ladies and gentlemen: live and let live.

Here’s my essay on “1984” by George Orwell.

 ‘1984’ is a dystopian novel about a country called Oceania. (The name Oceania probably alludes to the isolationist nature of its people).  Oceania  is constantly at war, but its citizens do not know why it is at war. They do support it, though, because anybody who is not a supporter is considered a traitor.

  Hatred and rage fuel the support of this endless war. 

 Anyone who dares to oppose the dictator’s ideas or think differently is vilified and will disappear. Those who work for the party are instructed to manipulate the truth as needed.  In fact, nobody is expected to  care about the truth because their lives would be at stake if they did. Freedom is considered to be blind obedience to the leader. 
 Physical movements and facial expressions are closely monitored by screens in people’s homes, political prisoners are treated worse than criminals and love does not exist; hatred and fear condition everybody’s behavior. Blind obedience to Big Brother is what matters.

 Torture and starvation await anybody who dares to challenge the system in any way.  Another strategy of the ruling Party is to destroy words. “We’re cutting the language down to the bone. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” “There will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

  Winston is a thirty-nine year-old man who works for the Ministry of Truth. He helps to change the historical facts but, in reality, he is a free thinking person who would like to sabotage Big Brother’s dictatorship. He falls in love with a woman, and they both challenge the system by loving each other and having secret encounters that they must plan in advance.

 When Winston becomes a political prisoner a member of the inner Party confesses to him, “Our civilization is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything. Already we have destroyed the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. ..”

   “There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science”.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power”. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”.

 The truth is distorted to meet the leader’s interests; conformity becomes the rule.

 The society in which the authoritarian regime thrives is designed carefully to disregard critical thinking and to believe blindly in their leader. His authority is not to be questioned, and those who dare do it are punished and labeled as enemies. George Orwell portrays the dynamics of this society with striking details.

 The features that make Big Brother powerful are the following:

-Fanaticism

-Scapegoating

-Exacerbated nationalism

-Mindless slogans and repeated lies

-The destruction of language

-Use of songs and ceremonies to venerate the leader

  The past becomes mutable for the government can manipulate history by rewriting the historical facts and changing the data to keep the dictator in power.  This is done because the omnipotence of the dictator can only be preserved through lies and irrationality. 

  In Oceania the proletarians - also called “the proles”- are the majority of the population. The Party claimed to have liberated “the proles”, but, in reality, the dictator does not care about them.

“So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.”

“All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations”.

   Contradictions are at the heart of the regime. In ‘1984’ the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. 

    The question that lingers in my mind is whether these totalitarian leaders succeed because of the ignorance and/ or apathy of the masses or the conformism of the intellectuals. I think it is a combination of both. As Albert Einstein said, “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

On Freedom and banned books

"Think wrongly if you please but in all cases think for yourself."~ Doris Lessing

In this era of television screens everywhere, drones and cookies I think of George Orwell and conclude that he was indeed a visionary. Television screens are highly efficient at manipulating the masses, and then there is another issue that curbs freedom: censorship.

 Those who ban books may believe that they have a higher “sense of morality” but I doubt the morality of those who abuse their power by banning books.

 I believe censoring a book is a violation of people’s freedom: the decision to read or not to read a book belongs to each individual person.

  What does the act of banning a book entail? Let’s analyze it.

 When somebody bans a book or makes an attempt to ban it, they are taking for granted that their opinion is more relevant than anybody else’s opinions. They do not give others the chance to read the book themselves and to reach their own conclusions regarding the quality or the significance of it.

   Do the people who censor books believe they are superior to the rest of the population? They are certainly not an example of humility but the epitome of manipulation and control which George Orwell portrayed so well in “1984” and “Animal Farm”. Not surprisingly these books have been censored and are still censored in some places.

 Another term that I want to challenge is that of the “challenged books”. When they say that a book has been challenged, they mean that a group of persons made an attempt to censor it or to restrict the access to it in some way.
 Challenging a book should carry a different meaning, though. It should be about reading a book and having an open discussion about it. In order to grow and learn we should all be allowed to read the book first. Then we can have a healthy discussion on it.

 I appreciate the opportunity to read other people’s opinions on books I read.  I may agree or disagree with them, but in both cases I find it enriching to learn what other people think about the same stories I have read. It is also thrilling to discover the different paths that a book can take in the minds of different readers.

 When I was writing this post I came across the news that a blogger in Saudi Arabia will be flogged 50 times every Friday during 20 weeks in a public square because he criticized Islam on his blog. His name is Raif Badawi.
 Raif Badawi is also jailed for ten years  due to the fact that he was brave enough to express his opinion.  (George Orwell shows in his novel 1984 how  prisoners of conscience  are subjected to ill-treatment and boundless cruelty.)
   Raif should be in Canada with his family now, but he is currently in prison, suffering the consequences of this torture.
I have signed a petition to ask the authorities to release him and to drop the charges. Here is the link.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King Jr., who was born on this day in 1929.