The novel's subject matter led to its censorship in apartheid South Africa and various schools in the United States. Upon its release, Fahrenheit 451 was a critical success, although polarized some critics. Bradbury finished the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and the novel was published later that year. Bradbury was urged by Stanley Kauffmann, a publisher at Ballantine Books, to make The Fireman into a full novel. Elements of both 'Bright Phoenix' and 'The Pedestrian' would be combined into The Fireman, a novella published in 1951. In the society of 'The Pedestrian', citizens are expected to watch television as a leisurely activity, a detail that would be included in Fahrenheit 451. In 'The Pedestrian', a man going for a nighttime walk in his neighborhood is harassed and detained by the police. An encounter Bradbury had in 1949 with the police inspired him to write the short story ' The Pedestrian' in 1951. Between 19, Bradbury wrote 'Bright Phoenix', a short story about a librarian who confronts a 'Chief Censor', who burns books. The writing and theme within Fahrenheit 451 was explored by Bradbury in some of his previous short stories. In a 1994 interview, Bradbury cited political correctness as an allegory for the censorship in the book, calling it 'the real enemy these days' and labelling it as ' thought control and freedom of speech control.'

In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote the book because of his concerns about the threat of burning books in the United States.

Bradbury's claimed motivation for writing the novel has changed multiple times. The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.įahrenheit 451 was written by Bradbury during the Second Red Scare and the McCarthy era, who was inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. It presents an American society where books have been personified and outlawed and 'firemen' burn any that are found.

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury.

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