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.