Discuss an award winning dystopian novel where the main character struggles with excessive controls on individual liberty and the banning and burning of books. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was written during the McCarthy era. It was motivated by Nazi book burnings, Soviet ideological suppression, and his concern that books could be burned in the US. Explore this book’s ongoing relevancy and prescience.
In conjunction with our special exhibit Banned Books 250, we are hosting monthly banned books book clubs with the San Francisco Public Library.
Where: San Francisco Public Library, Bernal Heights
When: Tuesday August 25th, 2:00-4:00pm
Publisher’s Synopsis
Simon & Schuster November 29, 2011 ISBN-13 : 978-1439142677
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
Ban History
Released to critical acclaim, Fahrenheit 451 has been banned, censored, and redacted. Notable incidents include being banned in Apartheid South Africa in the 1950s, removal from classrooms by the Bay County School Board in Panama City, Florida for vulgarity in 1987, and students at Venado Middle School in Irvine, California were given redacted versions of the book to remove obscenities in 1992.
