Monday, February 26, 2007

Burn, Baby, Burn--it begins.

Ray Bradbury's National Book Award-winning novel Fahrenheit 451 reveals in its first part, "The Hearth and the Salamander" several elements of a dystopian society: lack of individualism, government propaganda, re-written history and forced equality. The novel's protagonist Guy Montag, a third-generation fireman, begins to question the state of society after he meets a young girl who tells him the world used to be a different place. She awakens in him a realization of joy in life's simple pleasures--falling rain, a dandelion. He realizes how disconnected people are from each other, their thinking minds suffocated by a constant barrage of pleasureable distractions and media.

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This event is part of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.