Post on 22-Feb-2016
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Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451By Sean Foley
Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury: Early Life
• Born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois
• Moved to Los Angeles at age 13
• Self taught: never went to college
• Went to the library everyday after school
Start of Career
• Started writing at age 13, emulating Edgar Allen Poe
• First writing appeared in Mademoiselle
• First novel: The Martian Chronicles
• Married Marguerite McClure and had four daughters
Science Fiction
• Moralists
• Realm of possible
• Symbolic way to write of our huge problems
• Fiction of ideas
Fahrenheit 451
General Info
• Written in 1954
• Second novel by Ray Bradbury
• Written on public typewriter in UCLA library
• Later turned into a film by Francois Truffaut in 1966
Ray’s Influences
• McCarthy Era
• Attack on “thought-destroying” force
• Comment on defiance of literature for new technologies
• Technology causing alienation
Book Burning
“If it could happen in Alexandria, if it could happen in Berlin, maybe it could happen somewhere up ahead, and my heroes would be killed.”
• Hitler
• Alexandria
• Educators in danger
• Destruction of knowledge
Dystopia
• Opposite of Utopia
• Often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, etc.
• Thought crime
Sources
• Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Books, 1953. Print• Eller, Jonathan R. Becoming Ray Bradbury. USA: Library of Congress, 2011. Print• Aggelis, Steven L. Conversations with Ray Bradbury. USA: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. Print• Bradbury, Ray. “An Interview with Ray Bradbury”. www.neabigread.org. Web. 12 March 2013. • Bradbury, Ray. “The Art of Fiction No. 203”. www.theparisreview.org. Weller, Sam. The Paris Review.Web. 12
March 2013.