Product Description

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into key elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the familiar format.

CliffsNotes on Fahrenheit 451 explores a twenty–fourth century world in which books are considered evil because they inspire people to think and to question.

Following the story of a 30–year–old fireman who’s spent the last decade destroying books for a living, this study guide features a graphical map to show how the novel’s characters relate to one another. In addition, CliffsNotes provides character analyses that take you deeper into the minds and mechanical workings of Ray Bradbury’s famous social criticism.  Other features that help you figure out this important work include

• Personal background on the author
• Synopsis of the book and a look at major themes
• Summaries and commentaries on each part of the book
• Review section that features multiple–choice questions, quoted passages, and suggested essay topics and practice projects
• Resource Center with books, articles, and Web sites that can help round out your knowledge

Classic literature or modern–day treasure — you′ll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42934 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family", imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbour Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature. Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers aged 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman

From the Back Cover
More New and Revised Titles. The Best Just Got Better! Plus Glossary from Webster's New World^™ Dictionary Anthem Atlas Shrugged Beowulf Brave New World The Canterbury Tales The Catcher in the Rye The Contender The Crucible The Fountainhead Frankenstein The Grapes of Wrath Great Expectations The Great Gatsby Hamlet Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer Huckleberry Finn The Iliad Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Inherit the Wind Jane Eyre Julius Caesar The Killer Angels King Lear The Lord of the Flies Macbeth 1984 The Odyssey Oedipus Trilogy The Once and Future King Othello The Outsiders Pride and Prejudice The Red Badge of Courage Romeo and Juliet The Scarlet Letter A Separate Peace A Tale of Two Cities To Kill a Mockingbird Wuthering Heights See inside for the complete line–up of available CliffsNotes! Check Out the All–New CliffsNotes Guides To AOL^®, iMac^™, eBay^™, Windows^® 98, Investing, Creating Web Pages, and more! More Than Notes! CliffsComplete^™ CliffsTestPrep^™ CliffsQuickReview^™ CliffsAP^™ Over 300 CliffsNotes Available @ cliffsnotes.com Downloadable 24 hours a day Free daily e–mail newsletters Free tips, tricks, and trivia Free online CliffsNotes catalog Free self–assessment tools Freeware and shareware downloads

About the Author
Kristi Hiner is an English teacher at Wooster High School in Wooster, Ohio, where she also serves as the school newspaper advisor. A graduate of Ohio University, she is currently working on her Master′s degree.

Customer Reviews

Classic Science Fiction
It has been said that this short but unforgettable work represents Bradbury's only wholly successful novel. Personally I think Something Wicked This Way Comes is equally grand, and far more typical of its author, but there is no doubt that Fahrenheit 451 finds his narrative skills at their finest: the book drives forward with a clarity and urgency not found in any of Bradbury's other novels. His prophetic and visionary quality ranks alongside Orwell's, combining with paired down and super-efficient prose to create a nightmarish near-future where books are banned and burned upon discovery, and the firemen who destroy them 'custodians of our peace of mind'. Individuality is crushed and the masses satiated by the TV screens that adorn every wall of their living rooms. The protagonist is himself a fireman, until one day he begins reading a book and his world turns upside down. A brilliant and subversive piece of work, Fahrenheit 451 seems more relevent today than when it was written, not least because the world really has become increasingly as Bradbury foresaw. Short enough to be read in a single sitting, the book packs a punch that is never quite forgotten.

What foresight!
Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag; a fireman whose job is not to put out fires – all homes of Bradbury’s future having been fireproofed – but to start them. The firemen’s prime targets are books.

What follows is a poetic and mesmerizing look at a future of censorship that has far too many parallels to modern day consumerist societies. This edition contains an introduction and afterword that is just as interesting as the novel itself. Here Bradbury cites the arrival of MTV and other commercial entertainment as factors that are distracting us, as a society, from the essential knowledge found in libraries. He notes that such firemen are not needed anymore because we are doing the job for them.

Also explained is the genesis of the book itself. The author describes how F451 has its origins in 5 short stories including a surreal-sounding one based on an experience of his being stopped by a police patrol car just for walking down the street.

A superbly written book that has eerie similarities with the world today.

Bradbury's always timely warning on the evils of censorship
I am teaching "Fahrenheit 451" as the example of a dsytopian novel in my Science Fiction class, although it is certainly one of the most atypical of that particular type of narrative discourse. Compared to such heavy weight examples as George Orwell's "1984," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," Yevgeny Zamiatin's "We," Ray Bradbury's imaginative meditation on censorship seems like light reading. But the delicious irony of a world in which firemen start fires remains postent and the idea of people memorizing books so they will be preserved for future generations is compelling. Of course, there have been more documented cases of "book burning," albeit in less literal forms, since "Fahrenheit 451" was first published in 1953, so an argument can be made that while all the public debate was over how close we were the Orwellian future envisioned in "1984," it is Bradbury's little parable that may well be more realistic (especially in terms of the effects of television).

The novel is based on a short story, "The Fireman," that Bradbury published in "Galaxy Science Fiction" in 1951 and then expanded into "Fahrenheit 451" two years later. However, those who have studied Bradbury's writings caw trace key elements back to a 1948 story "Pillar of Fire" and the "Usher II" story from his 1950 work "The Martian Chronicles." Beyond that, there is the historical record of the Nazis burning books in 1933. The story is of a future world in which everyone understands that books are for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden. Guy Montage is a fireman who has been happy in his work for ten years, but suddenly finds himself asking questions when he meets a teenage girl and an old professor.

"Fahrenheit 451" is not only about censorship, but also about the inherent tension in advanced societies between knowledge and ignorance. Reading this novel again I am reminded about Pat Paulsen’s editorial on the old "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" (a series well acquainted with the perils of censorship) about how we might enjoy freedom of speech in this country but we do not enjoy freedom of hearing because "there is always the danger of something being said." Censorship, in practical terms, is the effort of those who do not want others to hear what they find offensive, for whatever reasons, basically because it leads to people thinking thoughts they do not want them to be thinking. Through the rambling diatribes of Captain Beatty, Bradbury makes this point quite clear to his readers.

Even though this is essentially a novella, Bradbury's work retains the charm of a short story. The recurring use of animal imagery throughout the story, the use of the mythic ideas of the salamander and the phoenix, make "Fahrenheit 451" more poetic than any other dystopian work. Even if it is predominantly a one note argument regarding censorship, it is impossible to deny that Bradbury makes a clear and convincing case for his position. Besides, there is something to be said for any work that insures that beyond the point at which water freezes the only other recognizable number on the Fahrenheit scale is the point at which book paper starts to burn.