The Book that Opened my Eyes

I have enjoyed reading since I was a little girl. Books were a way for me to escape the real world and embark on a journey full of sword fights, magic, friendship, romance and everything I ever dreamed about. It was all there in a rectangle-shaped object with hundreds of papers inside. But there was one book in particular that made me appreciate the real world more than it made me want to escape into a new one. It was not a book I ever pictured myself reading nor did I ever think it would change the way I looked at books, or at the world

The novel was part of a Banned Books Project I had to do in my English class my senior year of high school. I had never read a banned book before then so I knew the project was going to be interesting. The reason behind choosing the book I did was not a very exciting one. It just happened that I’d never read that book before and it was the only one on the list I recognized.

Fahrenheit 451 is the name, written by Ray Bradbury. It is a dystopian which I also had never read before and to be frank, the book appalled me. It was about firefighters who burned books and any house that contained them. I could not believe it! The author turned heroes who put out fires into villains that created them! I remember reading a line and then stopping to think about how awful the characters were. Books to the government in this story represented knowledge. And knowledge meant the possibility of the government being overthrown. There was one man however, who ended up risking his life for books. I’ll try not to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil the whole thing but I will say that I was never able to imagine a world without books, until I read this one.

Apart from valuing black ink on white paper, Fahrenheit 451 taught me some pretty big lessons. I learned to value life. To value face-to-face communication and human interaction. That is something that seemed insignificant in this novel due to the lack of it. Women watched television rather than speaking to their husbands and men seemed to value work more than their wives. Men would come home after work and their wives would not greet them. They would just sit and watch TV. It was like they were living two separate lives, and I hated that. I hated how the importance of family was replaced by worldly pleasures and how religion did not even seem to play a role in people’s lives. It was like everything I valued was completely destroyed in this dystopian society. And yes, I know this book is fiction so obviously it is not real but it made me think, What if this world becomes real? What if life as we know it transforms into something completely unrecognizable? I talked about this in my paper I had to write for the project. I wrote about how technology is becoming so prominent in our lives and books so insignificant that it makes me think we might end up like the characters in the book. I used an article in which the author stated that Fahrenheit 451 was about “the mindless role of television on society” (Guatham Shenoy). Some of the characters reminded me of mindless drones controlled by mindless technology and I feared that if literature continues to be diminished and technology valued greatly, I might one day be Guy Montag running for my life to save a book or one of those mindless drones who has forgotten what really matters, and ends up living a useless life consumed by technology. Sorry if that sounds dramatic but considering I love to read, I love my family, and I love God, imagining that is dramatic. Traumatic even. 

As of right now I believe my faith and values are strong enough that I won’t ever be that consumed in technology but I worry about others. Specifically my younger sister. She has been around smartphones and televisions all her life. She likes math and science but claims that reading makes her “head hurt.” This honestly breaks my heart because reading literally changed the way I view the world. I often worry that as she gets older she still won’t like books and its likely not many other people will. I was asked to write about whether or not I think my sister will get the opportunity to do the same project I did with the same teacher I had. My answer is no. Partially because she wants to be homeschooled after 6th grade and even if she wasn’t my teacher will probably be retired by then. However, I do think that she could have the opportunity to learn the things I did just by reading a book. Fahrenheit 451 is assigned to many middle and high school students as part of a class reading. If the novel does not become banned in North Carolina over the next few years, she will probably have to read it. I do not know if it will affect her the same way it did me or if it will affect her at all, but I can hope. 

So as you have probably already gathered, despite the appalling, immoral, and maybe even evil content of Fahrenheit 451, I loved every minute I spent reading it. I would read it again in a heartbeat and definitely recommend it to anyone who has not, which is probably not very many of you. This book will forever hold a special place in my heart because it taught me to cherish friendships, value family, and overall to always remember what is important to me.