Information Lost, Information Gained

I think that was in essence what Fahrenheit 451 was supposed to be about. That you lose information and knowledge and dreams and everything to time, to life to the world. But you gain more information and knowledge and dreams and everything as time, life and the world goes on.

For example, Montag loses his job (because of beginning distaste for it), his wife (her distance and their unfamiliarity with the other and lack of desire to truly know each other) and his home (to fire). But he realizes that none of that matters as long as he keeps moving, keeps picking himself up and keeps learning new things every day. He lost a lot in the span of a week, but he realized that what he lost wasn't who he was or who he desired to be.

I'm not going to lie and say I enjoyed reading Fahrenheit 451. As I have said before, I love reading and I chew through novels viciously. If this wasn't on the summer reading list, I would have probably picked it up myself sometime in the future. I have read many wonderful, beautifully crafted and written and imagined stories in my lifetime, and I had hoped Fahrenheit 451 would be one of them. But it wasn't. At least, not according to my standards.

There was no big unveiling. No shocker of an ending. No plot twists that were that twisty. The characters seemed underdeveloped and cloaked in too much mystery. The action sequences weren't excited and the oxymorons every other paragraph were killer. Descriptions and dialogue were a bit on the flat side. Situations did not make much sense half the time, seeing as the novel is narrated by Montag. A neither reliable or trustworthy guide.

I'm a writer, so I'm prone to being overly critical to literary works. But I have talked with others who have read the novel, and we seem to agree. When Fahrenheit 451 promised defiance and hope, it gave half-answered questions and a grim look at a possible future. This was not, as I had hoped, my kind of book.