Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Bradbury

      Hi, everybody! I've been really busy. Yet you may ask how was I able to finish another book but not write another entry... Well, that's one of the mysteries of life. Books can be taken out during class, laps don't.

     Now once again, another novel by my favorite author. Known as the poet among the science fiction writers, here comes again with a novel written in 1953 which strangely seems very alike to our own society.

 

¿Who has big TVs on their walls and likes to listen music all day long using headphones? ¿Who uses all their free time seeing soap operas, programs with destruction derbies, pursue criminals and the like? ¿Who likes to drive fast? ¿Who is with friends but seems to talk more with their iphone?

     If you did answer "yes" to any of these questions you may need to read this book or if you don't want to then maybe seek for the movie.

     Guy Montag is a fireman and what firemen do is burn books because they're a source of controversy and chaos within society. Guy really liked his job until one day he returns home and meets his neighbor, Clarisse McClellan, a cheerful 17 year old girl who is different and questions Guy if he is happy with his life. Guy brushes her off, assuring it but grows hesitant by the time he gets home.

     There he finds her wife, Mildred, in the bed with the seashells (earphones) in her ears staring blankly at the ceiling. Montag doesn't find anything wrong with it as she had been like that since long time ago until he falls with an empty bottle of sleeping pills. He tries to wake her up but he can't, he calls for help and two uncaring men arrive with a machine to replace Mildred's blood and pump her stomach. The men give an insight of the numerous incidents of accidental overdoses growing over the past years before they leave Mildred in his care and frustrated by their indifferent reaction.

I think I've read some of those books... Cool!

     By the time Guy wakes up, Mildred is making breakfast and complaining about a stomachache. She assumes she went to a party and drank too much alcohol. Guy at first played along but finally reveals to Mildred that she had a pill overdose, which she denies. And continues her daily routine which consists in staring at soap operas and reality shows all day long.
     Guy returns to work where he starts questioning the duty of firemen. But as his boss, Beatty, arguments -about how books and the duty of a fireman started since long ago being Benjamin Franklin the first fireman- the alarm rings and they head to investigate a house. Unfortunately, something went off and an old lady was still in the house. They find the books but Guy manages to hide one of them inside his jacket. The rest of the firemen start spraying the kerosene but they have problems with the old lady who refuses to leave. Guy begs her to leave with them as Beatty starts a countdown before they burn the house. The old lady insists and decides to "save them time". She takes a match out of her pocket. The firemen grow pale and run for the exit. The old lady then burns herself and the house.

Looks like a grandma who's seriously lost or dancing.

     Guy returns home shocked after seeing the old lady die. He returns to bed, undressing in the way and hides the book below his pillow. The next morning he asks Mildred to call Beatty for him as he feels ill but she doesn't believes him. He explains her he saw a woman die last night. Mildred acts apathetic and uninterested as she only wants to return seeing the TV. He continues to tell her how he wonders what may books contain to make her burn herself over submitting to the firemen but Mildred brushes it off as crazy. He compares her to Clarisse McClellan who was also different but asks Mildred if she hasn't seen her as he hasn't. Mildred causally answers she heard she died run over by a car. Guy frustrated asks her why didn't she told him sooner but Mildred doesn't care about her death and wants him to either decide to go to work or call Beatty himself as she's seeing the TV.
     Unexpectedly, Beatty arrives to their home as he supposed he would be "ill". Guy feels the presence of the book under his pillow burn below his head. Beatty comprehends Guy about feeling bad about the old lady but that one grows used to it. It sometimes happens. It is something necessary for society as they are harmful snobs who make everybody feel bad because they're not happy with things as they are. Happiness is brought by entertainment, a busy schedule and instant actions. Thinking, which books promote, creates chaos and unhappy people.
     Mildred starts fixing the bed.
     He tells Guy how he was once a rebellious and read many books in his youth but all contradicted itself and didn't tell anything. Having too many options makes all hard to decide, so it's just better to show one. To avoid that kind of behaviors, luckily, children are sent to school each year smaller. Guy then tells him that he met a girl who was different and Beatty recognizes he must be referring to his neighbor, Clarisse, who was recorded in the firemens' reports. He tells him that is for the better, sometimes that kind of children appear. The teachers didn't like her for asking why instead of how. Her house was revised many times but they never found a book but probably the family was nurturing her subconsciousness. He pointed he pitied Guy for being her target as she must have made him feel unhappy.

Definition of a snob

     Mildred then tries to fix his pillow but Guy struggles until Mildred realizes the thing below. She rapidly changes the subject and acts as if nothing. Beatty follows the flow of the conversation and tells them that luckily one day firemen won't be necessary as over time people will become totally uninterested of the content of books. But every time now and then a fireman will grow curious. Guy asks what would happen if one took a book from a house. Beatty tells him that it's okay to fulfill curiosity to see how harmful they are and then burn it by the time he returns to work the next day. Guy asks what if not. Before leaving, Beatty then tells him that his house would be burned and him arrested.

     Guy explains to Mildred how he feels unhappy and wants to see if he can find why in the books. Mildred replays proudly she is happy but Guy tells him that's not true as she almost died from pill overdose. He then reasoning its fair that she knows, shows her his hideout where he hides some of the books he had been taking from the houses he is sent to burn. Mildred grows hysterical and tries to burn them but Guy forces her to read the books along with him to find out if what they say may tell them why they feel and act like that but at the first phone call Mildred dashes and makes plans to see TV in her friend's house.
     He then remembers an old english teacher he met at the park long time ago who had a book and had given him his phone number as Guy had shown interest even while being a fireman. He calls but the man, Faber, believes he wants to trick him into revealing he has books so Guy goes to his house almost getting caught in the subway with the book.
     Faber seeing he is honestly interested lets him pass inside. Where he tells Guy that the book he brought is indeed the New Testament. He asks Faber to help him understand what he reads as it's too complicated for him and that he wants to make a copy of it as his boss will arrest him if he doesn't burn it. Faber tells him it's too dangerous to do that and nobody in his mind would dare take a copy of a book. Even so he's too old and it's too late to fight back. He resents not doing anything when everybody started censoring books. Guy then starts ripping the New Testament and desperately Faber complies to help him. Guy insists that maybe if they stop the firemen they may be able to do something and devises a plan where he plants books in their houses so that there will be discord within the system. Faber decides to aid Guy and gives him a "green bullet" (transmitter) as he knows he will have to face Betty next night and will try to destroy all his confidence in books.

...Faber, how do I read this?

     Guy returns home and feels safer while knowing Faber is in the other side of the line. When he returns home he finds Mildred and his two friends, Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, seeing TV. Montag turns off the TV and tries to strike deep conversation with the women. He asks them about their children and Mrs. Phelps replies she doesn't have children as they only serve to ruin one's life. Mrs. Bowles disagrees as she thinks is nice and easy, as they are only home three times a month and the only thing you have to so is turn on the TV like a washing machine. Mildred notices that Guy doesn't participate in the conversation and starts approaching politics to please Guy. The women start talking how it was obvious that the handsome candidate Noble would win over his other competitor who was ugly, small and had a horrible last name.
     He then asks them about Mrs. Phelps's husband. She nonchalantly tells them his husband was sent to war and demonstrates she had had a divorce and that his second husband committed suicide but that she doesn't worry at all.
     Guy angrily heads to the bedroom and comes back with a poetry book. The women are surprised but Mildred lies that it's permitted for firemen to bring a book back home once a year to remember how harmful they are while looking coldly at him. Faber begs him to stop but Guy ignores him. He reads Dover Beach and by the time he finishes Mrs. Phelps busted in tears making Mrs. Bowles to get angry at him and deem books as filthy. They leave while Guy demands them to reflect about their empty lives.

Montag made true the dream of
every salaryman who hates
his boss.

     The next day, Guy returns work and brings along one of the books which he throws in the incinerator in front of his fellow firemen. Beatty then assures he knew he could return to the herd but mentions he had a dream where they argued using quotes to torment Guy into giving up into books as they only contradict each other. The fire alarm rings; Beatty answers the phone and writes down the address and offers Guy to finish blackjack which Guy refuses. Then they head to the truck and drive following the address Beatty wrote down only to arrive to Guy's house. Astonished, he asks who was the one who called. Mildred leaves the house in a hurry and into a cab disappearing from Guy's life. Beatty permits him redemption by burning his house himself and Guy do as he's ask as he has no other escape. When he finally exits, Beatty manages to find out about the transmitter in his ear and takes it from Guy. He menaces with tracking the line and arresting his companion when Guy faces the flamethrower against him. Beatty dares him to do it and so does Guy. Beatty is engulfed in flames. The Mechanical Hound then attacks Guy and manages to inject him barely in the leg but Guy burns him with the flamethrower. He returns to his yard where they were still some books and makes a run to Faber's house.
      While he runs is easy to understand he is paranoid about the police. Yet albeit his murder, what the news tell is only the official start of the war. When he arrives, Faber lets him in and lets him explain what happened. When they see the TV they find that they're making his persecution a hunt to entertain the city. They see how from a helicopter a new Mechanical Hound arrives, how they make him get the scent from the flamethrower and how he starts to track Guy. They become conscious of the trail that he has left over the city until Faber's house. They rapidly organize. Faber lends Guy a case with his dirty clothes and suggests him to run to the wilderness and seek for the vagabonds living there. Guy tells him to activate the sprayers in the garden, clean with alcohol the doorknobs and many things to try to get rid of his odor. They say good-bye to each other. Faber hopes he may see him in the city where he is going to try to make a retired newspaper owner help him print the books.
     Guy makes a run for it. He gazes through the windows where all the people are seeing TV his own hunt. He stops when he sees the Mechanical Hound is approaching Faber's house. It stops suddenly and wavers next to the house but ignores it and continues seeking his trail. Guy returns to running and hears the advances of the Mechanical Hound through his earphones. Little by little, he runs by the streets Guy ran through but at a faster pace. When Guy sees the last row of houses, the news announce they want the cooperation of the people. They ask them that at the count of three everybody looks through their doors and windows, and report the whereabouts of the criminal. Guy tries to run faster and faster as the countdown goes to zero. When the citizens gaze through their doors and windows, Guy had arrived to the river where he has undressed and wore Faber's clothes. He lets himself be dragged by the current. By the time the Mechanical Hound and the police has arrived to the river, Guy had escaped and it had lost its track. They start looking elsewhere in the city.

A simplistic representation
of Montag and the Mechanical Hound.
Use your imagination.

     Guy escapes to the wilderness and finds himself astounded by nature which is unknown. He travels along the wilderness feeling a new sense of freedom and finally meets with the vagabonds. All of them are exiled of society and wait until they can return. They give Guy food and make him drink a substance which will change his odor. They have a small TV and show Guy how to please the public they have killed another man, such as Clarisse McClellan, and lied about him being Guy.
     They reveal to him they have books. That they are the books. Each of them has memorized a book and will wait till society collapse to be able to bring books back.
     Soon enough, an enemy bomber flies above the city and in an instant destroys it. Guy realizes Faber had escaped because he was in his way to another city but he knows Mildred didn't. The leader of the exiled soon compares humanity with the phoenix. It burns itself and revives but there's a difference: it can remember its past errors.

     I was amazed by what Beatty said all the time. He said the most meaningful things by the use of a bad example that's happening. One has to know that he wrote this novel when they were taking out "corrupted" books out of libraries and so this books represent the tension of a possible future. 

     Actually his prefaces and afterwords are very fun. In one, he explains how while trying to publish his book -in a time when no one wanted a book that talked bad about censorship-, he met a young man with little in his pocket who was willing to add his book in his magazine. Later, he meets him again: he was Hugh Hefner.

     Curious things... Well, happy reading!

The Iliad

by Homer

I will sumarize the book so if you don't want spoilers maybe its better not to read it but if you're like some of my friends who:

• Are lazy.
• Couldn't read past page one.
• Fell asleep while trying to read it.
• Didn't understand a thing Homer was saying.
• Has illiterate syndrome which in my dictionary means incapable to read anything that isn't facebook or alike.

     ...Then I welcome you to read it! With a half smile, maybe a complete one if you tried. I actually didn't felt it was hard but after Pride and Prejudice and Crime and Punishment -which are not from the same author although I admit the style of the titles are kind of similar- nothing felt hard anymore. I had friends saying, "I tried to read it once, couldn't read past page one though." So I guess this is dedicated to my friends who might want to know what they couldn't read.

WARNING: If you're using it to avoid reading a book you should have read for school be advised this is only a summary so I maliciously avoided lots of details -you know, is nice being evil and so-, also I actually read the book in spanish so maybe some names are in spanish.

Summary

     The Iliad is the story of the war of Troy in a specific time of it. It starts when the achaeans are plagued by Apollo for not returning Criseida to his father Crises. Criseida was the women Atrida Agamemnon, the leader of the achaeans, had as a spoil after destroying one of the cites near Troy because as they say in the story: men were to be slaugthered and women enslaved whenever a city was conquered. Pressured by Apollo and his own people, Agamemnon had to return Criseida to his father and also offer sacrifices to the god but he felt ashamed to be the only one losing his spoil as he was the leader so he took Briseida, Achilles's spoil, because he was the one who protected the seer who said that they should return Criseida.

     Achilles's was angered by Agamemnon because he felt unnapreciated after being the best warrior among them and vowed that he shall not help the achaeans even if the trojans came by the boats and set fire to them making them lose the war.

     Because Achilles wants to see Agamemnon regret his actions he asks her goddess mother, the Nereid Tetis, to help him make this come true. Tetis then goes to Zeus and begs him to favour his son to which he complies by favouring the trojans and mostly the mighty son of king Priam, Hector.

     The war ensues until the achaeans are fighting near the boats, trying with all there might to prevent Hector setting fire to them, just as Achilles wanted. Agamemnon regrets his choice and begs Achilles to return to battle offering him all kind of presents to which he angrily declines.

     The gods favouring the achaeans start plotting against Zeus who prevents them leaving the Olympus and so lots of battles and plotting occur between them such as Hera seducing Zeus into sleeping with her and Poseidon disguised as an old man running around the troops inciting them to keep fighting, and Athena helping Diomedes fight against Ares and other crazy but cool things.

     Achilles suddenly feeling compassion for his dead comrades accepts letting Patroclus use his armor and lead the myrmidons to scare away the trojans from the boats but only if he doesn't go near the walls of Troy to which he disobeys and dies -as everyone who more less knows the story- by the hands of Hector who then steals and wears the armor. The achaeans manage to recover the body.

     Achilles is then notified and gets a newfound anger against Hector. He makes peace with Agamemnon and accepts Briseida again with the sole purpose to avenge his best friend by bringing the corpse of his killer before he buries him. Meanwhile Tetis promises to bring his son a new armor made by the god of blacksmith, Hephaestus, knowing that Hector had stole the one he had. The next day she comes back with an impressive armor to which Achilles comes back to battle to kill the trojans.

     Curious fact: Agamemnon vows he didn't lay in the same bed with Briseida and says that if he's lying the gods should punish him. Later on in the Odyssey, it is gossiped and then confirmed by his ghost that when returning home to Mycenae her wife, Clitemnenstra, plotted his death with his lover, Egisto, while he tried to put on a shirt without the holes for the head and arms. Agamemnon regretted being incapable to help his concubine, Cassandra the seeress of Troy, when her wife murdered her.

     The trojans escaped to the walls of Troy when they saw Achilles in a killing spree aproaching them. Only Hector stood outside the walls even when his parents begged him to escape. When confronted by Achilles, Hector struck by fear starts running around the wall fast enough so he isn't killed by the spear of Achilles but slow enough that he can't escape. He continues running with the help of Apollo until Zeus forbids him doing so and Athena disguised as his brother, Deiphobus, tricks Hector into fighting against Achilles. He realizes when the spear comes back to Achilles's hand after missing and seeing his brother disappear that the gods had tricked and forsaken him. He fights back but is finally killed by Achilles. While dying he tells him that one of his brothers shall avenge him which only anger Achilles even more.

     Curious fact: Achilles is killed by Paris but her mother and a horse- yes, a talking horse!- told him he was going to be killed by the protector god of Troy. So it is assumed that the arrow Paris shot was directed by Apollo to the heel.

     After poking Hector's corpse with the help of the achaeans, Achilles ties him to the chariot and drags his body around the walls of Troy before returning to the boats leaving the trojans crying for they know the best warrior and hope of Troy has died.

Priam begs Achilles.
Makes muscular and nude good in all situations. 

     Meanwhile, Patroclus is burned and his remains put in an urn. Achilles starts the funeral games for his friend using his own goods as the throphies. After that he refuses to eat and drink and full of anger drags Hector's corpse around the mound where Patroclus's remains are in his constant fits of anger. Zeus feeling compassion for Hector who was devoted to the gods sends Tetis to stop his son and convince him to return the body when Priam comes, and sends Iris, a god messenger, to notify him of the plans of Zeus to recover the corpse of his son with a cart full of present to exchange with his only company being of a man older than him.
     Hermes, sent by Zeus, guides Priam disguised as an achaean boy to the camp and lets Priam pass by sentinels unseen. Hermes then reveals himself and reassures him of entering Achilles's tent. Achilles feels compassion for Priam who is an old man just as his father. While both admitting they know they shall die in this war and both feel powerless about that, they manage to find compassion for each other even when being enemies and start to eat and drink again. Achilles returns Hector's body to Priam and ask for the days they need to make his funeral to which he replies twelve. Finally warned by Hermes, Priam and his companion return to Troy. The book ends when they bury the remains and erect a mound to glorify Hector.


Hope you liked it. Soon I will do one for the Odyssey which I actually like better than the Iliad. Well maybe because I like much better shameless cunning bastard Odysseus than always-angry non-present Achilles. And I actually thought the Iliad was going to end when the achaeans conquer Troy so when I saw The End I actually flipped past the page because I thought I would find more and only found blank pages. I was somewhat disappointed.