Critical Essays Dystopian Fiction and Fahrenheit 451

Introduction

Critics find Bradbury's most interesting years the post-World War II years, 1947-57, a period that roughly corresponds to a time when science fiction authors began to approach their subject matter seriously and were creating characters who had psychological complexity and ambiguity. During this decade, Bradbury produced some of his most vital works: Dark Carnival (Arkham House, 1947); the amazing Martian Chronicles(Doubleday, 1950), his first and perhaps finest science fiction work; the short story collections The Illustrated Man (Doubleday, 1951) and The Golden Apples of the Sun (Doubleday, 1953); and Dandelion Wine(Doubleday, 1957), a short novel that has attained the status of being a minor American classic.

During this period, Bradbury also produced "The Fireman," a short story that appeared in the second issue of Galaxy Science Fiction (February 1951) and was expanded into Fahrenheit 451 (October 1953), his best and best-known novel. Initially published by Ballantine with two other stories, "The Playground" and "And the Rock Cried Out," Fahrenheit 451 was not published separately until the Ballantine paperback release in April 1960.

Major Theme of Fahrenheit 451

Interestingly, the impetus for the characters and the situation of Fahrenheit 451 date earlier than "The Fireman." They first appeared during the years immediately following World War II, as Bradbury reveals in his introduction to Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (Bantam, 1975):

This story ["Pillar of Fire," Planet Stories, Summer 1948], this character . . . I see now were rehearsals for my later novel and film Fahrenheit 451. If Montag is a burner of books who wakens to reading and becomes obsessed with saving mind-as-printed-upon-matter, then Lantry [protagonist of "Pillar of Fire"] is the books themselves, he is the thing to be saved. In an ideal world, he and Montag would have met, set up shop, and lived happily ever after: library and saver of libraries, book and reader, idea and flesh to preserve the idea.

By Bradbury's own admission, the thematic obsession that explicitly emerges in Fahrenheit 451 is the burning of books, the destruction of mind-as-printed-upon-matter. And although Bradbury never uses the word "censorship" in the novel, one should be aware that he is deeply concerned with censorship. Book burning is a hyperbolic phrase that describes the suppression of writing, but the real issue of the novel is censorship.

If "Pillar of Fire" is read sensitively, one finds that not all books are in danger in the future dystopia (an imaginary world where people lead dehumanized, fearful lives), but particular kinds, or genres, of books are at risk. This theme, of course, is not precisely true of Fahrenheit 451 in which all books that are burned by the "firemen" are in danger. This novel may be understood as a kind of hyperbolic extension of the tensions of the earlier story.

Bradbury's observation about "Pillar of Fire" (1948) begs the questions: What are the social and/or economic forces that caused such a thematic obsession to emerge in Bradbury's work from the period 1948-53? Why are only books of imagination, fantasy, and the macabre and occult threatened in "Pillar of Fire"?

Works by fantasists are also threatened in Bradbury's story "Usher II" (1950), which appears in The Martian Chronicles (1950). "Pillar of Fire" thus becomes a rehearsal for the themes of "Usher II," and the latter story appears to inhabit the same imaginative realm as does "The Firemen" published in 1951. ("The Firemen" was written during the same period as "Usher II" and is copyrighted 1950.) Indeed, the character of William Lantry in "Pillar of Fire" and the character of William Stendahl in "Usher II" are quite similar, as are the authors whose books are threatened — Poe, Bierce, and other American fantasists. Moreover, a Burning Crew is referred to in "Usher II," one that eventually burns Stendahl's beloved library of imaginative literature, and the Burning Crew is obviously a synonym for the firemen in Fahrenheit 451.

The question may be asked in another way: Why is Bradbury sensitive to the popular condemnation of fantasy literature? By extension, this question becomes an issue of the literary merit of works of popular literature. Why is Bradbury particularly sensitive to the critical reception of fantasy literature during the post-World War II period? The question becomes even more problematic when one considers that Bradbury himself was publishing science fiction and fantasy in legitimate magazines, or slicks, such as Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post, not in the pulps, or disreputable magazines. As Peter Nicholls observes, "[Bradbury's] career remains the biggest breakthrough into lush markets made by any genre of writer" (1985).