{"id":1060,"date":"2026-07-12T18:26:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T18:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2026-06-29T18:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:35:23","slug":"bookreview-fahrenheit-451","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/12\/bookreview-fahrenheit-451\/","title":{"rendered":"Bookreview: fahrenheit 451"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury portrays a dystopian world in which books are banned. Shakespeare, the bible, and plato, all are banned. It was originally penned in 1953. Note the publication dates of similar books: <em>brave new world<\/em> (1932), <em>1984 <\/em>(1949). <em>Brave new world <\/em>has been featured once on this blog already. <em>1984<\/em> has not been featured yet, hopefully I can cover it in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Where in <em>brave new world<\/em> which is featured in England the banning of books seems incidental to a point, in <em>fahrenheit 451 <\/em>the banning of books is the main theme of the story. There are a number of similarities between the stories. There is for example the presence of a supervisor who has access to books (while they are banned to the general public.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is not made explicit in <em>fahrenheit 451 <\/em>but there are scenes in which the chief fireman tries to demonstrate the demonic character of books by quoting some. The possession of books by the chief is assumed but not confirmed. In contrast in <em>brave new world<\/em> we are explicitly told that the <em>world controller <\/em>has a safe with a bible and with shakespeare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Interestingly quite recently (jan. 2026) a university in America did in fact ban Plato from university curriculae.<sup data-fn=\"aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce\" id=\"aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce-link\">1<\/a><\/sup> Combined with the efforts of a certain individual (who is on the epstein list) to limit all research which documents the horrific crimes of a certain nation that should not exist it<sup data-fn=\"13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630\" id=\"13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630-link\">2<\/a><\/sup> shows that some of these dystopian ideas are in fact manifesting itself in reality.<\/p>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-footnotes\"><li id=\"aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2026\/01\/08\/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course\/\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2026\/01\/08\/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course\/<\/a>, accessed june 29th 2026. <a href=\"#aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 1\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/7\/24\/whats-in-the-200m-deal-trump-has-struck-with-columbia-university\">https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/7\/24\/whats-in-the-200m-deal-trump-has-struck-with-columbia-university<\/a>, accessed june 29th 2026. <a href=\"#13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 2\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury portrays a dystopian world in which books are banned. Shakespeare, the bible, and plato, all are banned. It was originally penned in 1953. Note the publication dates of similar books: brave new world (1932), 1984 (1949). Brave new world has been featured once on this blog already. 1984 has not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"<a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2026\/01\/08\/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course\/\\\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaeltnietzel\/2026\/01\/08\/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course\/<\/a>, accessed june 29th 2026.\",\"id\":\"aa150d30-1677-4e6f-9291-3e66469d43ce\"},{\"content\":\"<a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/7\/24\/whats-in-the-200m-deal-trump-has-struck-with-columbia-university\\\">https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/7\/24\/whats-in-the-200m-deal-trump-has-struck-with-columbia-university<\/a>, accessed june 29th 2026.\",\"id\":\"13d9b542-5692-4c25-8b3c-41f5169b2630\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1064,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}