1. By Ray Bradbury

2. Utopian Literature  Literature that describes an imaginary ideal world.  Coined by Thomas More  Pun on the Greek eutopia “good place” and outopia “no place” Dystopian Literature  Literature that describes an imaginary world that is highly unpleasant.  Greek term for “bad place”  Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel.

3.  “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”  A challenge to authority  Spanish Civil War

4.  Fahrenheit 451 is set in the future, but the events of the 1950’s greatly influenced the story’s plot.  WWII recently ended  Atomic bombs-Nagasaki and Hiroshima  Cold War-fear of communism and nuclear warfare reflected in many aspects of Western culture.

5.  By the 1950s 60% of Americans were considered “middle class”=consumerism  Electronics industry became 5 th largest post-war. Television was both popular and controversial.  1956 Interstate Highway Act lead to the American automobile culture. In 10 years the number of cars on the road increased by 20 million.

6.  In the futuristic world of Fahrenheit 451, everything is fireproofed  In the 1950s the use of asbestos, a mixture of minerals used to make noncombustible materials, became extremely popular.  The first 200 copies of Fahrenheit 451 were bound in a fireproof material.

8.  Censoring-when words or parts of books are “cleaned up” or completely deleted from the original novel  Censorship-to change to public’s access to material based the decisions of a governing authority or its representatives. This can range from restriction to complete removal of the text from an institution  Challenged-an attempt to remove or restrict materials based on the objections of a person or group.  Restriction-when a book is kept from a certain audience based on the objections of a person or group.  Banned –when a book completely removed from an institution because of the objections of a person or group.

9.  In the 13 th c. during the Mongol invasion of Baghdad, entire libraries were burnt, and books were thrown into the Tigris River  WWII Germany, thousands of books that were unapproved by the Nazi party were burned.  Communist Russia and China, which rose after the war, have also banned books.  Dictatorships that survived the war, such as the Soviet Union and Spain, also banned and burned books. The authors of these works were also persecuted.

10.  http://neabigread.org/books/fahrenheit 451/media/ http://neabigread.org/books/fahrenheit 451/media/

11.  “Do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings, or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.”