Fahrenheit 451 Essays

These were the exact words in Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 is a story that was written through a novel by Ray Bradbury and produced into a movie shortly after directed by Francois Truffaut. Both the novel and movie captured an envisioned utopian society through the activity of book burning. Book burning is a harsh regime in oppressing ideas of a culture or within a community. Both novel and movie emphasized the eminent series of events but each had a peculiar way of unraveling them.

Both movie and novel Fahrenheit 451 captured Guy Montags’ struggle to understand what had become of his world. It followed the events that Montag did to bring things back like it was in his past. The readers and viewers were able to perceive the intensity of the plot. The novel was definitely a page-turner. As for the movie, you continued to watch it absorbed in suspense.

One thing about watching movies is that you have a set picture of the story right in front of you. In this story in particular, you were able to see details like the character’s expressions. You can distinguish between Beatty’s harsh glares and Linda’s ignorant visage to Montag’s dissatisfied glum. The scenes were brought to life in the movie. Which is pleasant to the audience’s point of view. Visually seeing these facial expressions makes the audience relate more to the actors. Which then leads you to be more into the movie.

On the other hand, the book of Fahrenheit 451 also gives its readers more detail in the plot and characters but by description. Bradbury describes the feeling and thoughts Montag has towards Beatty, Clarisse, and Linda and vice versa. He can depict a picture with simple metaphors. For example describing Clarisse, “What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eagle watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger…” (Bradbury, Pg. 20) A simple line like that can have his readers summon up a million personalities of what Clarisse can be. Since it’s to your own digression on how you chose to visualize the scenes and characters in the novel, you are personally satisfied.

As details, metaphors, and expressions add more meaning to a novel and movie, the elements of the story are what really count. While watching the movie and reading the book, I noticed that certain components were missing. In the movie, there was no sign of hounds and more importantly, Faber was never shown. The novel described mechanical hounds and mentioned a sum amount of times Faber took a necessary role in assisting Montag in his adventure. Therefore, the movie took away many scenes like Montag’s first encounter with Faber, the hiding of the Bible, plotting against the firemen, Faber’s assistance in Montag’s escape, and Montag’s struggle to avoid the hound. Many scenes taken away because some characters are never mentioned took away a lot of the overall meaning of the story. I didn’t feel to relate to the movie as much as I did to the novel. Leaving an apt amount of scenes out, took away some of the anticipations I was building up to. Which made me a bit disappointed.

The movie clearly also didn’t illustrate the war at the end as it did in the novel. The novel clearly stated that war had been declared and it added to Montag’s frustration with his society because his community continues to live like war is unimportant. None of it was ever mentioned in the movie. Regardless of the reason Truffaut didn’t put that scene in the movie, I thought it was important to show because it gave hope for a new civilization to be rebuilt and a sense of contentment to its audience.

On a brighter note, the movie did answer a few questions that appeared after reading the book. In the novel, Bradbury describes this utopian city in the middle of war destroyed by bombs and rockets. Bradbury never described what happened to Linda when she left Montag or when the city blew apart. He also never mentioned what happened to Clarisse. Having all these open-ended questions he leaves his readers with takes away from the story. So, just having to ponder these things is frustrating. There’s no sense of closure after reading the novel. Since there’s no sequel to the novel Fahrenheit 451, the questions just hang in the air unanswered unless you watch the movie. This is why I appreciate the movie more for giving it’s an audience that sense of closure.

Fahrenheit 451 is a story that illustrates that citizens can’t be subjected to their own opinions. We are all open to many options. Options like how a book or a movie should be made. Just like Fahrenheit 451’s very own. The book that was published and the movie that was featured shared the same concept of carrying on the plot of the story. Regardless of its own differences, each had it’s own way of depicting it to its advantage. Both outweighed the major lacking components with something impressive. With many ways movies and books can be distributed, Fahrenheit 451 is just one of many other stories that I personally believe complete each other when presented together.