Toatã lumea știe cã este o faimoasã distopie despre ars cãrţi (temperatura de 451 grade Fahrenheit este cea la care arde hârtia). Pompierii din aceastã lume sinistrã (unde materialele sunt ignifuge, așa cã noţiunea clasicã de pompier nu mai are sens) se ocupã, paradoxal, nu cu stinsul vreunui incediu, ci cu identificarea și ardere cãrţilor declarate ilegale.
Cititul este o infracţiune. Oamenii nu trebuie sã gândeascã, ci sã-și petreacã timpul agresaţi vizual și auditiv de plasme imense de pe toţi pereţii casei (vi se pare cunoscut? mda, și mie) Nu mai existã discuţii despre lucruri cu adevãrat importante, oamenii fug de clipele în care pot rãmâne singuri cu gândurile lor, toatã lumea refuzã sã vorbeascã despre sentimentul de gol existenţial în care se regãsesc.
"Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. "
Acţiunea este preferatã cuvântului (soţia lui Montag încearcã în repetate rânduri sã se sinucidã, dar nu oferã nici un fel de justificare pentru actul sãu, nu exprimã verbal nici o durere, nici o suferinţã, nu vrea sã schimbe nimic în propria viaţã). Toţi sunt menţinuţi în supunere necondiţionatã prin nesiguranţa continuã cauzatã de imaginile și ideea unui rãzboi care se întâmplã undeva departe și care este pãstrat la distanţã doar graţie sistemului pus la punct sau prin încurajarea consumului nediferenţiat și excesiv de medicamente și tranchilizante, la fel de eficient ca și promovarea agresivã a manifestãrilor sportive.
"With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word intellectual, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar."
"Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of `facts` they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant` with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
Personajul nostru principal, Guy, ajunge însã sã punã tot acest sistem sub semnul întrebãrii. Fãcând parte dintr-o brigadã de pompieri, începe sã aibã îndoieli privind justeţea acţiunilor sale atunci când asistã la sinuciderea unei femei în timp ce i se ardeau cãrţile.
"How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim’s mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren’t hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later."
Si de când al nostru Guy Montag se apucã de gândit, lucrurile degenereazã. Sau, de fapt, pentru el ca și individ se îmbunãtãţesc. Doar cã toate "de ce"-urile la care vrea sã gãseascã rãspuns îl scot în afara legii, îl fac sã fie un fugar urmãrit de autoritãţi, care pleacã în cãutarea incertã și mai curând fantasticã a altor exilaţi ca și el.
Spre deosebire de "1984", "Fahrenheit 451" se concentreazã mai mult pe evoluţia și ostracizarea rapidã a personajului. Nu existã drame sentimentale, personajul nu are profunzime, nu se bucurã de o analizã detaliatã, nu reușim sã creãm o legãturã afectivã cu Montag. Detașarea faţã de ce se petrece în carte este mai mare ca la Orwell, deși realitatea descrisã e mai apropiatã (din nefericire) de a noastrã decât lumea din "1984".
De asemenea, în "Fahrenheit 451" nu existã un geniu demonic, un dictator megaloman care sã punã la punct regulile unei noi lumi dezumanizante. Ray Bradbury își alege niște personaje banale, oameni care nu se diferenţiazã cu nimic de medie. Nu este scoasã în evidenţã nici o elitã de conducãtori care sã impunã regulile absurde dupã care se construiește lumea din "Fahrenheit 451" (bine, apare la un moment dat șeful lui Montag, dar și el face parte din aceeași categorie socialã, culturalã, intelectualã ca și Guy).
Oamenii par sã fie alienaţi din inerţie, nu din opresiune evidentã venitã de la nivelurile ierarhice superioare. Pânã la urmã, noi suntem cei care ne creãm societatea în care trãim, fie într-un mod activ, fie, mai trist, printr-un mod pasiv de a accepta lucruri nedrepte și lipsite de sens.
"I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the “guilty”, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it’s too late."
Clarisse, un alt personaj care rezistã opresiunii sistemului:
"Oh, they don’t miss me”, she said. "I’m anti-social, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. “Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting here for four more hours of film-teacher. That’s not social to me at all. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can’t do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing chicken and abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"
"Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?"
"I think so"
Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenthcentury man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending."
"Snap ending." Mildred nodded.
"Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title, certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumour of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbours. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more."
"More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before."
"Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals."
"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these."
"Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead, he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn them all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean."
