I recently started reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and couldn't help but relate parts of the story to the Mormon church. For example, the people in the book don't want to read books because they contain differing thoughts that conflict and promote "useless pondering". Instead, the people are happy with not thinking and simply accepting what the government tells them is true. While reading it I kept thinking about how Mormon members are exactly the same. They feel happy to just follow the path set before them because it is "true" and avoiding books or other intellectual material that may promote thinking outside of the box. It's scary reading this book and basically seeing how the world would work if the Morg was running things. Check it out if you're looking for a good book to read.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share. Any other fans of this book?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 01:51AM by vincefan7.

I'm sure many of us exmos have it on their top list.

I often think about the book and the movie with Julie Christie and Oskar Werner.

Scary dystopia. Think about Montag's wife who's only interested in socializing and interacting with "family" in some sh*tty tv series, the screens big as the apartment walls.

I read that in high school. I think I'll have to do a re-read.

Same here, as I haven't read it since I was in high school.

Those robotic dogs with the syringe teeth.
That gave me the shivers!
This book was absolutely part of the reason I was able to break away from the church.
The questions it raised in my 12 year old mind long, long ago, set me down a path of great books. And ideas. And everything else And it provided a temporary escape from the crap reality of being a mormon.
And it gave me strength for some reason. Does that make sense?
I LOVE this book!

** I was looking on some robotic/science news sites and saw this crazy robotic dog. They had to have gotten the idea from bradbury. Seriously.
ill edit to add the link. its incredibly....I don't even know..

"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. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?"

Clarisse is a 17 year old girl that Guy sees every day on the street. She is always walking in the rain or picking flowers or talking about how drivers never pay attention to the view. She is told that she is anti-social, because she doesn't think like everyone else and refuses to go to school. She thinks that school is anti-social, because they bring everyone in and don't let them talk. No questions are allowed -- only answers. She is "abnormal" and made to see a psychiatrist (LDS Social Services?). Guy's wife Mildred, on the other hand, is normal. She watches TV all day and never has an original thought.

At the end of the book, Guy joins a group of "living books" in the forest. Each person has memorized a book and knows it intimately. Guy knows the book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible. It's not much, but it's a contribution. Bradbury's message here seems to be that even if you learn something small -- at least it's a contribution to human knowledge and of value.

I think Orwell's 1984 is more similarities to Mormonism, but Fahrenheit 451 certainly has some parallels.

I would have hated to be the guy that had to memorize the BOM.

I've already memorized about a third of the BoM:

"And it came to pass ..."

See?

Commit "And I make an end of my speaking" to memory and you'll have almost fifty percent of it memorized!

Although not endemic of just Mormons, Fahrentheit 451 does represent a certain mind set in different populations. It can be assigned to portray people of religion, and it can just as easily be associated with National Socialism, Communism, etc.

What is "ironic" (futuristic maybe a better term...) about the book is Montag's wife and her obsession with Bradbury's version of "social networking". Kind of reminds me of Facebook.

Having typed all that, I was teaching in an LDS community some years ago and one of the required readings was Fahrenheit 451. I have never had parents or students treat me so poorly. The reason was the book. I asked one parent (LDS) why she thought the book was bad and she said it didn't have "The Spirit" (Good thing we didn't try to read The Tropic of Cancer...). (No poop...she said that.)

So I asked her, "You don't find it weird that no one wants to read a book about burning books???"

That got me a stupid look.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 09:11AM by tensolator.

Must be all the "damns" and "hells" and "Gods" in the book.

Doesn't have the Spirit? I love the Coda, where he says something like, "If the Mormons don't like my stories, let them write their own stories" (okay, Joe Smith already did, but...).

I saw the same thing with Brave New World in an LDS population at a local high school--the kids refused to read it, although I knew it was on the reading list at BYU and BYU-I because I had read it there.

Heaven forbid we think about the world.

The deal with Bradbury (total opinion, here) is that his ideas are cool. . . I guess. But a lot of it was overly simplistic--even childish. I've never actually enjoyed anything of his.

Anyway, too many people in general are like this. That's how Bradbury was inspired to write it. But this does remind me of how I put Catcher in the Rye on a reading list for my sophomores and my mother was soooooo disapproving. My dad was also an English teacher, and after my mom made a huge speech about how, no, she didn't know what it was about and she hadn't read it, but she knew Mormons who protested their kids reading it so it must be really awful.

I replied simply that I had heard bad things about it, too, but I couldn't understand it. I mean, at the end of the book Holden rubs off a piece of graffiti in a school so little kids didn't have to see it!

My dad, who NEVER goes against my mom, said, "so what happens in the book? . . . He holds a girl's hand."

Geez Louise, I don't get people.

This book wouldn't, by any chance, have anything to do with Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" (which the Utah Mormons absolutely hated back in the mid-2000s) would it?

They're both about being coercing public opinion.
Instead of the temperature at which paper burns, it is meant as "The Temperature at Which Freedom Burns" -tagline.

PeacePrincess Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This book wouldn't, by any chance, have anything
> to do with Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"
> (which the Utah Mormons absolutely hated back in
> the mid-2000s) would it?


I can't tell if this is sarcasm or sincerity.

Moore's propaganda piece paralleled the title of Bradbury's (written in the 50s) to borrow some of the associated conspiracy/paranoia feeling.

As I recall, Bradbury was well pissed about the situation, which I found a little ironic considering Bradbury's views on freedom of speech.

But I'd say it's part of a quartet of books that immunized me against Morg thought: "1984," George Orwell; "The True Believer," Eric Hoffer; "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury; and "The Illusion of Immortality," Corliss Lamont.

Not-all-are-in-print-ly yrs,

S

yes!! excellent books to help immunize the mind from morg-bothood.
I'll add a few more...
minority report ( short story) by Phillips k. Dick.
Stranger in a strange land- Robert heinlen
watership down
David copperfield - Dickens
the lottery- Shirley Jackson

You're a Bundle of Laughs by Vera Funny

The Industrial Revolution by Otto Mattick

Artificial Weightlessness by Andy Gravity
how 'bout these?


The Palace Roof has a Hole by Lee King

Ecclesiastical Infractions by Cardinal Sin

Preaching to Hell's Angels by Pastor Redlight

Songs from 'South Pacific' by Sam and Janet Evening

I Was a Cloakroom Attendant by Mahatma Coate

Fifty Yards to the Outhouse by Willy Makit; Foreward by Betty Wont

Foot Problems of Big Lumberjacks by Paul Bunion

His short stories are pretty good.

I love books like this or 1984 that make you take a look at the way in which authoritarian orgs control information in order to keep the masses in line. Some truths are not very useful.

A Canticle for Leibowicz
The Handmaiden's Tale
The Gate to Women's Country

I think anyone who has a daughter should encourage them to read this book. Or at least watch the movie......
Margaret Atwood is a KILLER author.
Just amazing

love this book even as an adult, i think it relates not only to tssc but to society as general, people do not want knowledge they only want to be told what to think

What does antisocial mean to they story of Fahrenheit 451?

I didn't read the book but I wastched the movie. After 2 semesters at Ricks in the mid-sixties and dealing with honour council Nazi's, and having just read "1984" a couple years before, that one rang very true to me....

Ron Burr

I thought 451 was great.

There was another film I liked about mind control:

George Lucas' graduate film school project 'Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB;' was made into a commercial film– 'THX 1138.' The film portrayed a future dystopia where people were feed pills to make them conform, sex was outlawed and people were forced to work long hours at dangerous manual labor. Then they were sequestered in their 'rooms' and shown holograms of people beating on each other. The hero escaped to freedom...

They prayed to a god named OMM, who ended each 'confession' with "You are a true believer, blessings of the State, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy."

Of the two versions, I preferred the film school version–'Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB'