Fahrenheit 451, Misery, & Why I Read

On lists of the best dystopian literature, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is usually near the top.  The story is well known.  Firemen no longer extinguish fires, but instead start them.  The fuel for the fires is books.  The books are illegal and firemen are public servants, rescuing society from danger.  When I came back to reread this book about books I realized why it is I bother reading at all.  Fahrenheit 451 shows me the importance of risking misery.  How about that for an uplifting start to an essay? 

This essay is best read after reading the novel and will reveal significant plot points.

If I am going to tell you that misery – while certainly not something we should seek out – is not something to be avoided at all costs, I should ask a couple questions.

First, Why would a society make reading illegal?*  The answer comes from Fire Chief Beatty.  Books are full of ideas that contradict ideas from other books.  Books also remind people of bad things, such as war and bad-governance.  Such things cause friction and friction causes misery.  The solution is to ban books and occupy people’s minds with other things.  This will make people happy.  A happy society is a good society.

Second, is Beatty right that reading actually causes problems?  It is a mistake to say that Beatty is completely wrong.  Reading is risky. 

Reading in and of itself cannot change the world.  Professor Faber suggests to Guy Montag – the protagonist – that if reading is going to be effective, people must be free to act on what they read.  Do we necessarily want people to act on what they read, though?  There is still the pesky problem of disagreement.  Some ideas clash with other ideas.  This means that there are some bad – even flat out wrong – ideas put in print (or on blogs).  We then have a two-headed beast.  Reading will not always change the world, but if it does change the world, it might make things worse. 

This brings up another problem.  In the essay “Lilies that Fester,” C. S. Lewis writes about being cultured (i.e. being well-read and the like)  and whether it qualifies a person for leadership.  He decides that it does not.  Qualities of a leader – “mercy, financial integrity, practical intelligence, hard work” – are not any more likely to exist in a cultured person than in anyone else.**  That suggests a question to me.  What if people are reading the sorts of things we want them to act on and they are free to do so, but reading does not lead to action – whether due to laziness or incompetence?  This is a important question when it comes to social justice.  All sorts of information are out there.  Still homelessness, hunger, and illiteracy are rampant.

We know the risks.  Does Beatty’s solution actually address them?  The answer is an emphatic “No!”  Class divisions still exist, otherwise Guy and Mildred would not need to worry about spending a third of his salary on a fourth video-wall.  Oppression also continues.  If reading really was useless and unwanted by society at large, why bother torching the books and arresting the few readers?  Unhappiness still exists, as demonstrated by Mildred’s attempted suicide, Clarisse’s critique on her schooling, and Guy’s dis-ease with his work.  Finally, the leadership from the intentionally illiterate has problems.  The government still lies to the public, there is no due process for the accused, and there is no venue to criticize the ruling class.

What we see from the intentionally illiterate in Fahrenheit 451 is powerful people correctly identifying something people do not like – conflict and unpleasant memories – but developing an inappropriate solution to fix the problem.  “Inappropriate” is too gentle.  Not only does it not solve the problem, it makes solving the problem impossible.

Reading is valuable for the exact reason Beatty tries to avoid it.  It allows conflicting ideas and unpleasant memories.  Faber explains to Montag why reading is important.  Books are where we store ideas so we can retrieve them later.  Books are certainly not the only place to do this (film and radio come to mind for the old professor), but they are certainly efficient.  Books mean we will not forget. 

Does remembering sometimes hurt?  Absolutely.  Should we therefore avoid remembering?  Absolutely not. 

Beatty says something telling to Montag.  He says that taking away reading will make people equal.  This is backwards.  We do not make people equal.  People already are equal.  We have gone out of our way to destroy equality.  Our task is to restore equality.  Restoring equality is impossible without books and other media that allow the free flowing of ideas.  There is a certain irony here. Like Faber tells Montag, there is nothing magic about a book.  Books only matter because of what is in them.  We cannot ignore this.  Many books have bad ideas.  Books can be a tool for inequality. 

A bad idea is still an idea, though.  Ignoring a bad idea does not stop the idea.  The social inequality that Beatty talks about is a bad idea.  It is also a big idea.  If we want a big, good idea to combat the sort of big, bad ideas that are so easily stored in books, we need our own books to help us in this fight.  The only way to tackle a big, bad idea is with a big, good idea.  Reading lets us understand the big, bad idea.  Reading lets us respond to it.  Reading lets us evaluate our response, to see what works, what doesn’t, and what makes things worse.  Reading lets us remember our response to a big, bad idea. 

Inequality is evil.  Will reading about its opposite cause conflict?  I hope it will.  Inequality needs to be opposed.  Will reading about inequality cause misery?  I hope it will.  Misery shows empathy and empathy opposes evil.  Without reading, therefore, the big, bad idea wins.

That is what I read.

 

* Not all reading is illegal.  Billboards are ever expanding; the firemen have a policy manual; comic strips continue.  Literacy has to exist, otherwise how did Montag read the books he was slowly stealing (rescuing?) from burns?

**This essay was originally published in 1955 and is now available in The World’s Last Night and other essays.  The edition I used was published in 2012 Mariner by Mariner Books.

This post originally appeared on my former blog ajdickinson.blogspot.ca. The date stamp is for the date of the original posting.