Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury that presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who soon 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.

Fahrenheit 451 was written during the Second Red Scare and the McCarthy era, inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. Bradbury's claimed motivation for writing the novel has changed multiple times. 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. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. 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 labeling it as "thought control and freedom of speech control".

Upon its release, Fahrenheit 451 was a critical success, albeit with notable dissenters; the novel's subject matter led to its censorship in apartheid South Africa and various schools in the United States.

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