Abootalebi, Hassan. “The Omnipresence of Television and the Ascendancy of Surveillance/Sousveillance in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.” K@ta, vol. 19, no. 1, 2017, pp. 8-14.
In this article, the author analyzes Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 by applying Baudrillard’s perspective on the media and Foucault’s concept of surveillance. Abootalebi briefly describes Baudrillard’s view of media, according to which media does not provide the audience with communication; instead, it stages communication and makes people confuse reality with simulation. Next, the author reviews the concept of surveillance, which means imposing constraints on people to make them malleable in favor of the watchers. Abootalebi further analyzes Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, briefly summarizing the novel and discussing how media is presented there. The author concludes that Bradbury portrays a world in which people are highly influenced by media. However, they do not realize this influence, while it takes a toll on education, literature, and history. This source is valuable for its analysis of the role of media in Fahrenheit 451.
Bogár, Ádám Tamás. “Books as Metaphors in The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451.” Critical Insights: Ray Bradbury, edited by Rafeeq O. McGiveron, Salem Press, 2017, pp. 163-177.
This chapter explores the role of books in two of Bradbury’s works: The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Bogár argues that books in Bradbury’s writing were used as symbols and helped the writer create the atmosphere of home or a good and friendly place. The author discusses how books in Fahrenheit 451 symbolized a knowledge repository, the storage of human life, and the importance of thinking. Bogár also describes the meaning of the physical representation of books both in Bradbury’s writings and personal life. The author concludes that Bradbury’s purpose was to prove that books encouraged critical thinking, which, in turn, was a necessary condition for sustaining a conscientious society. This source is valuable for its detailed analysis of the book symbolism in Bradbury’s works.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451: A Novel. Simon and Schuster, 2012.
This novel depicts a dystopian world in which books are burned by firemen, and critical thinking is strongly discouraged. In this world, individuals rush through their lives and have no time to stop and think over vital questions. When they have spare time, they entertain themselves with various types of media enabled by advanced technologies or lead empty conversations with each other. Montag, the protagonist of the novel, seems to be well-suited for this dystopian world. However, as the story proceeds, various events make him realize the emptiness of his life and evoke a thirst for knowledge in him. This novel is significant because it shows what could happen to a society if it rejected books in favor of the media and lost the ability to think critically.
Gebreen, Hayder Ali Kadhim. “Dystopian World of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.” International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, vol. 3, no. 7, 2020, pp. 215-222.
In this article, Gebreen provides the historical context in which Fahrenheit 451 was written. The author argues that the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the threat of the atomic war, the fear of communism, and censorship in the McCarthy era influenced Bradbury’s mind and urged him to write Fahrenheit 451. In this article, Gebreen first narrates key historical circumstances existing in the 1950s when the novel was written. Further, the author reviews the distinctive features of dystopian fiction. Finally, Gebreen analyzes Fahrenheit 451 as an example of dystopian fiction. The value of this source is that it reveals the historical context, which influenced the writing of this novel, and helps understand why Fahrenheit 451 refers to dystopian literature.
Pendery, David. “Transformational Quest in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.” International Journal of English, Literature and Social Science, vol. 2, no. 3, 2017, pp. 50-62.
This article analyzes Fahrenheit 451 from different points of view. First, the author explores two major themes of the novel: society and transformation. Further, Pendery takes a close look at the language in which the novel is written and analyzes such elements as wordplay and the meaning of the characters’ names. In the second section of the article, Pendery analyzes the structure of the novel to track the transformation of Montag, the novel’s protagonist. Pendery discovers that Montag transforms at two levels: at a personal level, he progresses from ignorance to awareness, and at a heroic level, he turns from a villain into a hero. This source is valuable because it provides an in-depth analysis of the plot structure of Fahrenheit 451, which helps get a better understanding of the transformation that the protagonist of the novel undergoes.