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Description of the book: Ray Bradbury woke up famous after the publication of his novel Fahrenheit 451. This is the temperature at which paper burns. A fantasy novel, a future in which there is no place for books, no place for those who think freely. Everything has been replaced by TV shows. But there is an army of law-abiding robotic people, zombie people who stupidly execute the commands of the ruling handful of rulers. But the opposition is alive, and people have hope for a brighter future.

In these days of active anti-piracy, most of the books in our library have only brief excerpts for review, including the book Fahrenheit 451. Thanks to this, you can understand whether you like this book and whether you should buy it in the future. Thus, you support the work of the writer Ray Bradbury by legally purchasing the book if you liked its summary.

Ray Bradbury

451 degrees Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper ignites and burns.

TO DON CONGDON WITH THANKS

If they give you lined paper, write across.

Juan Ramon Jimenez

Preface to the publication of the novel "451 degrees Fahrenheit", 1966

From nine years old to adolescence I spent at least two days a week at the City Library in Waukegan, Illinois. A summer months there was hardly a day when I couldn't be found there, hiding behind the shelves, smelling the books like foreign spices, getting drunk on them before reading.

Later, as a young writer, I discovered that The best way to be inspired is to go to the L.A. library and wander around, pulling books off the shelves, reading - a line here, a paragraph there, snatching, devouring, moving on and then suddenly writing on the first piece of paper that comes along. Often I would stand for hours at the file tables, scratching on these pieces of paper (they were constantly kept in the library for researchers' notes), afraid to stop and go home while this excitement possessed me.

Then I ate, drank and slept with books - of all kinds and sizes, colors and countries: This manifested itself later in the fact that when Hitler burned books, I experienced it as acutely as, forgive me, when he killed people, because throughout the long history of mankind they have been of the same flesh. Mind or body thrown into the oven is a sin, and I carried it with me as I walked past countless fire station doors, patting service dogs, admiring my long reflection in the brass poles firefighters ride down. And I often passed fire stations, going and coming from the library, day and night, in Illinois, as a boy.

Among the notes about my life, I found many pages with descriptions of red cars and firefighters rattling their boots. And I remember one night when I heard a piercing scream from a room in my grandmother's house, I ran into that room, flung open the door to look inside and screamed myself.

Because there, climbing the wall, was a luminous monster. He grew before my eyes. It made a powerful roaring sound as if from an oven and seemed fantastically alive as it fed on wallpaper and devoured the ceiling.

It was fire, of course. But he seemed like a dazzling beast, and I will never forget him and how he mesmerized me before we ran off to fill a bucket and kill him to death.

Probably these memories - about thousands of nights in a friendly, warm, huge darkness, with pools of green light from lamps, in libraries, and fire stations, and an evil fire that visited our house in person, later combined with knowledge of new fireproof materials, served to so that "451 degrees Fahrenheit" grew from notes into paragraphs, from paragraphs into a story.

Fahrenheit 451 was written entirely in the Los Angeles Library building, on a commercial typewriter that I had to feed a dime every half hour. I wrote in a room full of students who didn't know what I was doing there, just like I didn't know what they were doing there. Some other writer must have been working in this room. I like to think so. Is there a better place to work than in the depths of a library?

But now I'm leaving, and I hand you over into the hands of myself, under the name of Montag, in another year, with a nightmare, with a book clutched in my hand, and a book hidden in my head. Please go a little way with him.

HEART AND SALAMANDRA

Burning was a pleasure. Some special pleasure to see how the fire devours things, how they blacken and change. The copper tip of the hose is clenched in his fists, a huge python spits out a poisonous jet of kerosene at the world, blood is pounding in his temples, and his hands seem to be the hands of an outlandish conductor performing a symphony of fire and destruction, turning torn, charred pages of history into ashes. The symbolic helmet, decorated with the number 451, is pulled low on his forehead, his eyes sparkle with orange flame at the thought of what should happen now: he presses the igniter - and the fire greedily rushes at the house, coloring the evening sky in purple-yellow-black tones. He walks in a swarm of fiery red fireflies, and most of all he wants to do now what he so often amused himself in childhood - to stick a twig with a candy into the fire, while books, like doves, rustling their wings-pages, die on the porch and on front lawn, they take off in a fiery whirlwind, and the wind, black with soot, carries them away.

A hard smile froze on Montag's face, the grimacing smile that appears on a man's lips when he is suddenly scorched by fire and he swiftly recoils from his hot touch.

He knew that, returning to the fire station, he, the minstrel of fire, looking in the mirror, would wink friendly at his burnt, soot-smeared face. And later in the dark, already falling asleep, he will still feel a frozen convulsive smile on his lips. She never left his face, never for as long as he could remember.

He carefully wiped and hung up his shiny black helmet, carefully hung his canvas jacket nearby, washed himself with pleasure under a strong stream of shower and, whistling, putting his hands in his pockets, crossed the landing of the top floor of the fire station and slid into the hatch. IN last second just as disaster seemed imminent, he yanked his hands out of his pockets, grabbed the shiny bronze pole, and screeched to a halt just before his feet touched the cement floor below.

Out on the deserted night street, he went to the subway. A noiseless pneumatic train swallowed him up, flew like a shuttle through a well-oiled pipe of an underground tunnel and, together with a strong jet of warm air, threw him onto a yellow-tiled escalator leading to the surface in one of the suburbs.

Whistling, Montag climbed the escalator into the stillness of the night. Thinking of nothing, at least nothing in particular, he came to the turn. But even before reaching the corner, he suddenly slowed down his steps, as if the wind, blowing in from somewhere, hit him in the face or someone called his name.

Several times already, approaching the turn in the evening, behind which the sidewalk lit by the stars led to his house, he had experienced this strange feeling. It seemed to him that a moment before he turned, someone was standing around the corner. There was some kind of special silence in the air, as if there, two steps away, someone hid and waited, and only a second before his appearance suddenly turned into a shadow and let him through himself.

Maybe his nostrils picked up a faint aroma, maybe he felt a slightly noticeable increase in temperature near the place where someone invisible was standing, warming the air with his warmth, on the skin of his face and hands. It was impossible to understand. However, every time he turned a corner, he saw only white slabs of deserted pavement. Only once it seemed to him as if someone's shadow flickered across the lawn, but everything disappeared before he could look or utter a word.

Today, at the turn, he slowed down his steps so much that he almost stopped. Mentally, he was already around the corner - and caught a faint rustle. Someone's breath? Or the movement of air caused by the presence of someone who stood very still and waited?

He turned the corner.

On the moonlit pavement the wind drove autumn leaves, and it seemed that the girl walking towards her did not step over the slabs, but glided over them, driven by the wind and foliage. She tilted her head slightly as she watched the toes of her shoes brush against the swirling leaves. Her thin matte white face shone with affectionate, insatiable curiosity. It expressed mild surprise. Dark eyes looked at the world so inquisitively that it seemed that nothing could escape them. She was wearing a white dress, it rustled. It seemed to Montag that he heard every movement of her hands in time with her steps, that he even heard that slightest, elusive sound - the bright trembling of her face, when, raising her head, she suddenly saw that only a few steps separated her from the man standing in the middle of the sidewalk.

The branches above their heads, rustling, dropped a dry rain of leaves. The girl stopped. She looked like she was ready to recoil, but instead she looked fixedly at Montag, and her dark, radiant, lively eyes shone so brightly, as if he had said something unusually good to her. But he knew that his lips were only saying a simple hello. Then, seeing that the girl, as if spellbound, was looking at the image of a salamander, on the sleeve of his jacket and at the disk with a phoenix pinned to his chest, he spoke:

You are obviously our new neighbor?

And you must be ... - she finally tore her eyes from the emblems of his profession - a firefighter? Her voice froze.

Fahrenheit 451 is a widely acclaimed philosophical novel by Ray Bradbury. The name was not chosen by chance: at a temperature of 451 °, paper ignites.

Ray Bradbury describes a world where keeping and reading books is taboo. Firefighters do not fulfill their intended purpose - saving people, but burn books and even the houses of people who own literature. Keeping books is a crime punishable by law. The opinion prevails throughout society that this is done for the good, so as not to instill conflicting thoughts and reasoning in the minds of people. The absence of literature does not allow the members of such a society to develop, to think about their lives. It is believed that the lack of spiritual and intellectual development will help humanity get rid of heavy thoughts about the meaning of its existence. It is important not to be smarter than your neighbor. Thus, the idea is traced that the absence spiritual development is the key to the happiness of all mankind. The most important thing is to get rid of negative emotions. The world is ruled by a consumer attitude to everything, only the material has value. No one cares about feelings and experiences, personal communication is minimized.

The emptiness in the souls and minds of the heroes, the meaninglessness of existence, impassivity and indifference cause sadness, make you think about the meaning of life, about spirituality and make it clear that you need to appreciate not only the material. The novel raises fears for what our real world if society is aimed only at obtaining material benefits, avoiding communication, emotions, enjoying nature and simply the opportunity to feel, experience experiences.

The work belongs to the fantasy genre. It was published in 1953 by the Azbuka publishing house. The book is part of the "Classic (soft)" series. On our site you can download the book "451 degrees Fahrenheit" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The rating of the book is 4.35 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also refer to the reviews of readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In the online store of our partner you can buy and read the book in paper form.

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian science fiction novel by author Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury describes the model of a totalitarian society. With the help of the dictatorship, the government of the country is trying to establish complete control over the behavior and life of each of its citizens.

Those in power create a consumer society in which only material values. The life of its representatives is empty and priceless. They are constantly in a hurry to get to or from work, and their free time is spent watching meaningless TV shows, advertising, clogging and mind-controlling news. At home, these people are surrounded by interactive television, projected onto all the walls at the same time, through which they communicate with virtual friends and relatives offered by the system. Everyone constantly has headphones in their ears, as an indispensable element of everyday life, from which useless information with hidden settings enters the mind. Under such conditions, reasonable thoughts about the purpose of such a pastime cannot arise, people are completely controlled by those who control their minds.

Guy Montag, main character Roman, works as a fireman. Here the firefighters perform a peculiar function. They burn books. Literature is forbidden in a totalitarian consumer society. And the people who keep it are subject to arrest. After all, books can prompt reflections, bring a person back to life, communication with each other and nature, open a canned mind and feelings. By reading books, you can learn about the history of mankind, your roots, the past, identify with it, gain integrity and belonging to something greater than yourself, instead of living in one moment, not realizing who you are, as dictators want .

You can download Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 in epub, fb2, txt, rtf formats on our website about books.

At first, Guy Montag regularly performs his duties. Until he meets a young girl whose behavior is different from the rest, and turns his view of the world upside down. She behaves not like a programmed robot, but like a living person: she enjoys life, talks about her inner world admiring the beauty of the flower. The girl contrasts with everyone around her, and this surprises Guy Montag, who did not know before that this was possible. Unusual for Guy is also the act of an old woman, to whose house he comes to destroy books. She refuses to give them away, and not seeing the point in existing without "food for the mind", she burns herself along with them.

Montag himself begins to think about the correctness of the state of affairs in such a society. He steals a few books and secretly keeps them, learning some passages from them by heart. Later, he meets an old man who also, with a danger to his life, keeps literature in his memory and at home. Together they are going to start printing books on a typewriter, and with their help, revive society.

Guy turns to his wife, hoping for her enlightenment and help. But she does not understand him and turns her husband over to the police and firefighters.

With adventure and danger, Guy Montag manages to escape the city limits. Guy jumps into the river to throw the dogs off the trail, which, guided by the smell of the body, are chasing him. The current carries him to an unknown forest. On its outskirts, he meets a group of people, consisting of a former writer, researchers, a priest and other educated personalities, each of whom has also escaped from the system and stores fragments of books in his brain. Suddenly, they see how a city already far from them is falling. atomic bomb. In such an outwardly prosperous country, the war began and, at the same moment, ended. Now, this team is full of hope for building a new uniform. state structure and new life in the place of the destroyed territories.

451 degrees Fahrenheit Ray Bradbury

(ratings: 2 , average: 5,00 out of 5)

Title: Fahrenheit 451

About Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of his most famous books. Among the author's equally favorite novels, one can name The Martian Chronicles. By the way, the book "451 degrees Fahrenheit" was included in the list of books that everyone should read.

On our site you can download it in fb2, rtf, epub, txt formats.

So, before us is a fantastic dystopian novel, a look at the American future - the way I saw it. What do we see in it? Perhaps nothing good: the complete collapse of humanity and humanity. The new person no longer has a soul and individuality, but there is a TV. Lots of TVs and series. They, like wallpaper, just hung all the walls ...

The protagonist of the work "451 degrees Fahrenheit" - firefighter Guy Montag. Only now he does not extinguish houses, but on the contrary, he burns them. And only those in which ... books were found! Yes, it's books. Because the goal of the system is to educate completely identical people. The book in this case is a strategic weapon of human resistance against the system, and it must be destroyed.

It is sad to see how quickly the volumes of books are shrinking. The classic becomes a fifteen-minute TV show, an entry in a burnt encyclopedia... It is not needed for the society of the future. According to Montag's boss, Beatty, in this case, everyone will be the same, and no one will be able to stand out. In general, it is precisely such people that the system seeks to manage.

Ray Bradbury has told us a lot by exaggerating the influence of the media. He showed how stupid people become when they don't read. In the book Fahrenheit 451, Montag's wife, Mildred, is the clearest example of this. Empty inside, she needed only an additional TV screen. Exploded when something disturbed the normal regime. And in general, it turned out to be a kind of Pavlik Morozov ...

In this book there are also complete antipodes of the "new people". This is Clarissa McLeland, Professor Faber and a kind of spiritual opposition. Therefore, all is not lost ... Read to everyone who loves dystopia. Fahrenheit 451 is one of the finest examples of its kind.