Life and Times--

2. Life and Times-- • Born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois • 1934—permenantly moved to Los Angeles, California • Bradbury turned to writing at a young age

3. At 17 he became a member Los Angeles Science Fiction League, where he published his first work • Bradbury's first short story was published in Weird Tales when he was 20

4. Novels: • Martian Chronicles (1950) • Fahrenheit 451 (1953) • Dandelion Wine (1957) • Something Wicked This Way Comes(1962) • Wrote for years for both • Alfred Hitchcock Presents • The Twilight Zone • Also has written: • two musicals • produced dramatic presentations of a number of his novels • Wrote screenplay adaption of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

5. He had an award winning cable television show, The Ray Bradbury Theater • 5 of his novels were made into movies • Bradbury was a • consultant for the 1963 World's Fair • helped to design the Spaceship Earth ride at Disney World's EPCOT Center • Bradbury died in June 2012

6. 1950s Political Climate • Book burning was already prevalent • Censorship was a real and frightening concern in the U.S. when Fahrenheit 451 came out in 1953 • Book burning was presumably contagious with the period of Nazi anti-intellectualism during the late 1930s

7. Alien Registration Act • Passed by Congress in 1940 • Made it illegal for anyone in the U.S. to advocate, aid, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government • The law required all alien residents in the U.S. over 14 to • File a statement of personal • File occupational status • File a record of political beliefs

8. Fahrenheit 451 also appears during the era known as the McCarthy period • the postwar political climate characterized by xenophobia (fear or foreigners or anything foreign, blacklisting, and censorship • Fahrenheit 451 emerged during a period of extreme interest in what is called “an authoritarian society” that roughly corresponds to the years 1945-1953, as revealed in George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1948)

9. McCarthyism-- Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin whose unfounded accusations of a Communist-infiltrated Department of State, led to the suppression of information and the propagation of falsehoods and fear • This fear of communism was known as the Red Scare– it spread beyond government into the private sector • Pressure to scrutinize, modify, and prohibit was on, and writers, publishers, moviemakers, performers, and advertisers felt the squeeze

10. In June 1949 some seventy colleges were asked to submit their textbooks for examination and approval by the Un-American Activities Committee • In 1953, the Chicago Archdiocese Council of Catholic Men was spearheading a pro-censorship campaign

11. The alarming trend prompted President Eisenhower to speak out… "Don't join the book burners...Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book..." "Freedom cannot be censored into existence…A democracy chronically fearful of new ideas would be a dying democracy."

12. Many of the issues explored in Fahrenheit 451 cannot be separated from the historical period in which they appeared • The novel held a particular fascination for readers in the 1980s when censorship in schools and libraries resurged

13. Banned/Challenged Books • Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms • At least 42 of the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts

14. The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee The Color Purple, Alice Walker Ulysses, James Joyce Beloved, Toni Morrison The Lord of the Flies, William Golding 1984, George Orwell Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck Catch-22, Joseph Heller Brave New World, Aldous Huxley The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

15. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell Native Son, Richard Wright One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey The Call of the Wild, Jack London Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway The Jungle, Upton Sinclair Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence

16. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut A Separate Peace, John Knowles Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs Women in Love, DH Lawrence The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser Rabbit, Run, John Updike

17. Culture of the Fifties • Conformitywas common, as young and old alike followed group norms rather than striking out on their own • Though men and women had been forced into new employment patterns during World War II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed • Men made the money; women took care of the home

19. In 1953 TV was just beginning to appear in average American homes with small screens, distorted pictures, and 3 networks—ABC, NBC, CBS • TV became the focal point of millions, while the popularity of radio and movie theaters plummeted • Television programming has had a huge impact on American and world culture • Many critics have dubbed the 1950s as the Golden Age of Television.

20. How TV could eventually affect American life became a fundamental theme of Fahrenheit 451 Television struggled to become a national mass media in the 1950s and became a cultural force – for better or worse – in the 60s.

22. Science Fiction • Fahrenheit 451 uses the science fiction motif of dystopia—a totalitarian, highly centralized, and oppressive social organization that sacrifices individual expression for the sake of social harmony and efficiency, all of which are achieved through technological means

23. Guy Montag first appeared in "The Fireman," a short story published in 1951 • The story was expanded two years later, in 1953 and was published as Fahrenheit 451 • Bradbury, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature • His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news

24. Bradbury wrote that “Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’ This sort of hop scotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people.” • HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people.

25. Scott Kaufer, a longtime television writer and producer, argues “Television is good for books and has gotten more people to read them simply by promoting them,” • He hopes Bradbury “will be good enough in hindsight to see that instead of killing off literature, [TV] has given it an entire boost.” From “Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 misinterpreted” by Amy e. Boyle-johnston

26. Who do you agree with-- Bradbury or Kaufer??