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Edited on Thu Jul-13-06 08:26 PM by Democrats_win
Michael Moore’s F-9/11 captures the main idea of Ray Bradbury’s F-451: that it is absurd to strive for or even demand happiness during tragedies, disasters, or wars. In F-9/11 Bush reads My Pet Goat to children during the attack. He’s the only man in America who can take actions against the terrorists and he doesn’t stop because he doesn’t want to disturb the children and make them unhappy. The golf scene also shows the absurdity of striving for happiness when it’s inappropriate. In that scene, Bush talks to reporters about the war and then says, now watch this shot.
In F-451, firefighters bring about "happiness" by burning books. Their reasoning is, “A book is a loaded gun. Burn it....Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” Notice their fear of elites. Overall, their main concern over books is that they make people unhappy. Thus the populace lives in a false happiness, alive yet not alive. In fact suicide is so common that the people who revive suicide victims resemble plumbers more than doctors. People are so lost in F-451 that they actually call the people on TV, “relatives” or “family.” Today, we have “big brother” on TV although the original reference is to 1984's Big Brother. Wise Americans like one of the characters in F-451, have learned true happiness does not come from shopping or watching TV.
The most astonishing prophecy of F-451 is the willingness of the government to switch blame for a crime from one person to another. In F-451, Montag, the hero, is being chased on live TV by a special robot dog. However Montag jumps into a river and the authorities realize they won’t be able to capture him for their live audience. Instead, they switch directions and go after one of the many “odd ducks” they’ve spied on over the years and kill him instead. They announce that there has been justice and Montag is dead. F-9/11 discusses the real fulfillment of this prophecy with the switch from chasing Osama to chasing Saddam.
Ironically, Michael Moore ignores one of the primary lessons of F-451 but by doing so, he becomes a virtual martyr. In F-451, Montag, becomes so excited about books that he insists that his wife and her friends listen to a passage from a book. They, however, aren’t ready for it and run away shocked, angry and scared. Montag learns an important lesson: “you can’t make them listen.” Thus when Moore, at the Academy Awards, accurately portrays Bush and his war as fictitious, many people were not ready to hear it since most Americans had war fever. However, had he remained silent people may never have questioned the war. The media vilified him making him a virtual martyr for his remarks which in the end may have been one of the initial sparks for America’s eventual redemption.
Moore’s movie doesn’t follow the ultimate path of F-451 but instead marvels at the real absurdity that unfolded in this country. In F-451, the nation destroys itself in war like a great Phoenix. The great hope of F-451 is that people are different than the Phoenix. They know all the silly things people have done over thousands of years and as long as they know that, and have it around where they can see it, some day they’ll stop “making the funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.”
Montag and his well-read friends, have a strategy for this change. They won’t act important when they tell the story of the particular book that they have learned. When people ask what they’re doing, they’ll just say, “Remembering.” They hope, “one day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.”
Montag remembers a line from his book, Ecclesiastes, “And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
This is only a small part of the rich texture of "Fahrenheit 451." It is worth reading and is a relatively short book.
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