Why doesn’t Mildred turn him in?

In Fahrenheit 451, Mildred clearly discovers the book under her husband’s pillow when Fire Captain Beatty comes to the house when Montag doesn’t show up for work.

Bradbury has already established that she doesn’t feel much empathy for anyone – for the woman who burned to death with her books the night before (“‘She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books.’”) or for animals (“‘I always like to drive fast… It’s fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs’”).

So why doesn’t she pull the book out from under the pillow and turn in Montag immediately?

Fahrenheit 451: a prophecy?

In one of the NEA’s book discussion questions for the Big Read, it is asked if Fahrenheit 451 is a prophecy. After all, “the public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”

In light of recent studies, for example, one that showed Americans aged 15-24 watch television for about 2 hours every day while they only do leisure reading for seven minutes every day ( U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey (2006)), is this 1953 book a prediction of our 21st century world and our future?

Read with me in November: Fahrenheit 451

Read Fahrenheit 451 with me in November! This classic novel of a future anti-intellectual dystopia by Ray Bradbury is about fireman Guy Montag, who prides himself in his job of setting fires to books until he learns of a time when books were read, not burned and it turns his world upside down. Read the first chapter here or read along as Ray Bradbury reads the first chapter.