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May Ray Bradbury rest in grace. Bradbury has long been one of my favorite go-to authors for studying technique. Farenheit 451 has been on my test bench as long as Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, to name two of many, none read as closely nor as frequently as those two.
Bradbury taught me the significance of theme. Three themes stand out in Farenheit 451: the dangers of censorship, how technology destroys culture, both of which Bradbury espoused are central themes, and lastly, the abuses majority rules democracy impose on powerless minorities, re: intellectuals (readers), thus civil dissent as a tool for asserting equality.
Thank you, Mr. Bradbury.
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Bradbury was an admirable man in many ways. But there are two thins that I will always love about the man more than any others. He started off writing fan fiction. And he understood the difference between science fiction and fantasy.
I don't usually grieve the death of celebrities who I never met. But this time is an exception.
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“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451Posts: 725 | Registered: Jan 2011
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