Critical Insights: Fahrenheit 451

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Critical Insights: Fahrenheit 451 explores Ray Bradbury’s most famous and most influential work of literature in a variety of contexts and from a number of different critical perspectives and intellectual foci.

Edited by Rafeeq O. McGiveron, English scholar and author of extensive literary criticism of Fahrenheit 451 and other works, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

A classic novel of dystopian science fiction, Fahrenheit 451 also has been adapted for the theater, film, television, and radio. Bradbury’s swift, poetic, elegiac work tells the story of an America of the not-too-distant future, where books are outlawed, citizens in violation are hustled swiftly away to psychiatric prisons, and the offenders’ houses are duly burned by kerosene-wielding “firemen.” After all, books—and the thoughts and emotions they bring—are a threat to the fast-paced consumer’s paradise of four-wall television rooms, jet cars, and tranquilizers. All the while, however, jet bombers circle ominously in the night, violence is endemic in entertainment and on the streets, families are bleakly loveless, and suicide is commonplace.

This volume is divided into four main sections:

Introduction and biography of the man behind the literature.

Critical Contexts which help inform and set up readers' understanding of Fahrenheit 451.

Critical Readings which explores the many facets of the novel.

Additional Resources include:

• Chronology of Ray Bradbury's Life
• Works by Ray Bradbury
• Bibliography
• About the Editor
• Contributors
• Index

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