Posted by What is happiness? Are you happy? Why? What is the source of that happiness?
Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, written in the early 50’s, comes out of the same mould as the dystopian world of Huxley’s 1930’s novel Brave New World and Orwell’s 1940’s novel 1984. It is as important as the blueprints of Huxley and Orwell’s novels.
Bradbury takes the key theme (control of humanity) that we find in all three novels and adds a reminder to us of how to find happiness in the horror of this world that our essence has been trapped in.
And it is so simple.
This is revealed at the end of the novel, where he has lost, and left behind, everything from his life. He possesses nothing of material value and nothing of emotional value anymore (though he has gained something far more worthwhile).
The trappings and comforts of the life he has left are so far behind him that he is even wearing someone else’s clothes, as he sits around a fire discussing the state of the world with other fellow ‘outsiders’, exiles, from society.
Sitting around that fire, which is giving him warmth and comfort, rather than the destructive work he did as a “fireman” burning books in society, he realises what he had gained while losing all his “possessions” (his house, job, wife, colleagues, car, even his clothes).
It is this: He has recovered his spirit, his soul. Moreover, he has removed the burden, the weight, of the valueless life he had created and lived with all his life.
He was happy, finally.
As noted above, control of humanity is the dominant theme of all three novels.
Huxley and Bradbury’s novels both depict mind programming and trivial comforts as the method to make humanity happily love their servitude. In Orwell’s novel, the veneer of happiness has been dispensed with entirely as unnecessary. No one is happy. In all three, there was, of course, no room for freedom of thought, or individuality. This was incompatible with control.
The hero of Fahrenheit 451, “Guy Montag” spends his days mindlessly and contentedly employed as a fireman burning books (which are anyway no longer of use or interest since everyone watches the screen on the walls). Books are deemed dangerous (thought is not allowed) and possession of a book is punishable with death and incineration of all possessions.
One day he burns down an old lady’s house, and even the old lady herself, while burning her collection of books which she refuses to be parted from. It’s his job, but something inside of him doesn’t sit comfortably after this. He has no idea what that might be.
He takes a walk around his neighbourhood (an out-of-the-ordinary, eccentric act as nobody walks anywhere anymore) and bumps into a young girl who briefly chats to him. As she is leaving, she says to him:
Are you happy?
And then she is gone.
Montag thinks, “Of course I’m happy. Why would she think I’m not”? But then as he walks home he realises he is not happy.
The book goes on:
He is not happy! He said the words to himself. He recognised this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way to knock on her door and ask for it back.
Then he thought: why was that old lady not prepared to part with her books? Why did the books matter so much to her? There must be something in those books. Why am I required to burn them all?
He says to himself:
It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! It’s all over.
He goes home to his wife who spends her days and nights mindlessly watching soap operas on the big screen on “the wall” and says to her:
How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
His wife has no idea what he was talking about. She said she was happy, and proud of it. Nor did Montag’s boss “Captain Beatty” understand him either. He said to Montag:
You ask ‘Why’ to a lot of things and you end up very unhappy indeed. We [firemen] stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.
So we must ask ourselves, which is it to be: Mindless happiness or the more difficult route of questioning the meaning of life? We can’t go in both directions.
A recent acquaintance of Montag, an old man called Faber, says to Montag: “I don’t talk things, sir, I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive”.
The meaning of things, Faber said, was contained in books. He said it could (or should) be projected through the “screen on the wall”, but it was not. Books were the only receptacle we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.
And so Montag keeps and reads a book from a house he burns down, gets caught, has his own house and possessions burnt down, sees his wife leave him without even a look back, and finally runs to Faber who helps him to escape the “Hound”, the all-seeing, all-hearing surveillance technology that tracks and kills offenders.
He runs and runs, and finally leaves the city and the “Hound” far behind.
And he stops running when he meets the old men sitting by that fire. They have heard of him already on the news. And they tell him they have all the books he wants – stored in their heads.
They say:
Better to keep it in these old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. All we want to do is to keep the knowledge we think we will need, intact and safe. We’re the old minority crying in the wilderness. When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.
And that is the last part of any dystopia – war, and endings. And new beginnings.
Control is always sustained by war. But dystopias end, and the cycle starts again. Life is cyclical. And then the books and knowledge are needed again.
The old men sit by the fire and watch the bombs from the war that no one understands obliterate the city beyond them. They tell Montag that they, the outsiders, are so few that the city never could be bothered to chase them, so they have become the survivors.
They ask themselves: “I wonder how many knew it was coming? I wonder how many were surprised”?
Those that question the nature of reality are few and far between. It is easier to follow the crowd, the herd. But just wait a while and the cycle of repression will end. History tells us this.
Keep questioning and seeking knowledge, and pass along that knowledge that we learn to those who will listen. They will find us, and we will find them.
As Ray Bradbury says in his Afterword half a century on, happiness is not a love affair with the girl next door, it is with knowledge, “a knapsack of books”.
That’s what we take with us and it is better than anything physical.
14 July 2025
Piers Morris Blogspot 