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Page 89
The final irony, perhaps, is that Bradbury's early ironic fiction seems to have made greater imaginative impact than his later celebrations. Though he has continued to express his enthusiasm for the future in numerous formats, most notably in his three volumes of poetry, his early "warning" fiction expressing his distaste for the most ominous aspects of mid-century American culture still is central to his literary reputation. His most sustained work in this vein, Fahrenheit 451, provides an earthbound nightmare alternative to the ironic space romance of The Martian Chronicles. If mankind does not fulfill its destiny in space, Bradbury's mythos suggests, the best we can hope for is to survive the coming apocalypse with some of our cultural heritage intact.
David Mogen, Ray Bradbury (Boston: Twayne, 1986), pp. 9495
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Susan Spencer
In Fahrenheit 451 the reader has the feeling of moving backward in time to a preliterate society, and the content of the society's "literature," although here it is for political ends, strengthens this impression.
The last phase of Beatty's pronouncement, "That way lies melancholy," with its literary overtonesvery different from the plainer common speech of his subordinatesis not unusual for Beatty. In keeping with the idea that knowledge is power, Bradbury gives us several hints that the fire chief has had frequent access to the forbidden texts and that this is either a cause or a result of his being made chief (just which is unclear). Like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story "Harrison Bergeron," set in another disturbing dystopia where "everybody [is] finally equal," some people are seen clearly to be more equal than others and thus enabled to wield power over their fellows. In Vonnegut's story, the ascendancy is physical: Diana Moon Glampers, the "Handicapper General," is the only citizen who isn't decked out in distorting glasses, distracting ear transmitters, and bags of birdshot to weaken her to the level of society's lowest common denominator. In Fahrenheit 451, the ascendancy is purely textual, but that is enough. Beatty's obnoxious confidence and habit of quoting famous works strikes the reader immediately and leads to a question that Bradbury never answers: why is this highly literate person permitted to survive, let alone hold a position of high authority, in an aggressively oral society? Something is rotten in the whole system. Evidently someone higher up, Beatty's shadowy superior, feels that there is

 
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