'The faintest breath of fresh apricots and strawberries in the air'

Photo by Freddy Kearney on Unsplash

 

“The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

One of the joys of long distance flying is the onboard entertainment. The closer your date of departure, the more excited you get about what you'll be able to watch from the box of delights that is hidden within the small screen in the back of the seat in front of you. 

Eva and I recently returned from an epic trip to New Zealand. It was filled with many adventures and marvelous memories, but for now, I want to focus on the films that I watched on the long flights, and one film in particular. 

I'm not great at sleeping on planes, so I consumed vast amounts of films:

777 Charlie - a Bollywood film about a man's life transformed by an injured street dog.

IT - The film version of the novel by Stephen King. The book is far better.

2001 A Space Oddsey - AI takes control of a space ship - weird ending.

The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug - Not as good as LOTR

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - Believing in a leaders vision - scary!

Julie & Julia - A wonderful true story on the joy of cooking French cuisine and writing. 

And finally, the one that impacted me the most, and inspired this post - Fahrenheit 451.

I can't remember when I first heard of this book but it's being on my TBR list for a long time. In a nutshell, it's a dystopian novel where firemen no longer put out fires, but start them. They burn books, the title comes from the temperature that paper burns at.  

As I've looked into the film and novel that inspired it, I've now discovered that the film does not appeal to everyone's taste, indeed as one critic put it, 'it extinguishes what made the film great.' Personally, I found it both disturbing and powerful, and it kept my attention, with one scene in particular that made me gasp - warning - spoiler ahead -  a character who is so passionate about her right to read, reveals that she has a books tied to her waist, like a suicide bomber, and sets herself alight.

Many believe Fahrenheit 451 is about the danger of censorship, but what it's actually about is the danger of mass media, especially television. This was written in 1953, long before YouTube, which is how many people now receive their knowledge of what is happening in the world. 

I'm curious as to how many of you have read this book? For the teachers among you, is it on the school syllabus? It certainly sounds like it should be. 

I've just read the synopsis on Wikipedia, and discovered, to my surprise, that the book that, Montag, the main character, steals from the house of the lady who set's herself alight, is the Bible - in the film I watched, it's Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground.

Could we ever become a society where mass media takes over? In some ways it seems so, with the rise of fake news and people taking their information from YouTube and online sources. 

Let's hope that books will always be loved, respected and the freedom and right to read will never be taken from us. 

“A BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda

 

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda

Martin is a writer, baker, photographer and storyteller. He's been published in the ACW Christmas anthology and Lent devotional. He's currently honing his craft at flash fiction, and you can find him on Twitter here.