It took me a while to get this, but it was worth it. You probably know it or you probably need to find it out for yourself. I'm not asking you to take my word for it. I'm just saying it. And here it is.
BOOKS ARE NOT ABOUT WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE.
Maybe bad or mediocre books are. Not the great ones, though. You would think that books are about stories and plots and characters and complexity. They are all those things, but they are not about all those things the same way you and I are flesh and bones but are not about flesh and bones. If that's what we were about, we would be dead. Only corpses are flesh and bones about flesh and bones.
Books are words and pages and covers. The moment they truly get a chance to become something else, something more important is when somebody reads them. I guess this is the most important thing about Brandbury's novel. The same way nothing is worth speaking when no one is listening, there little to no sense in writing a truly great book if no one gets to read it.
But more than that, Fahrenhei 451 is not only a novel about a world without books, but - more than that - it is a novel about a world without the thing books stand for: critical thinking. I'll just end this with my favourite quote of the book.
“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re
Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the
avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ - Ray Brandbury
R.
P.S. Rzvn update.... soon!
