Yo yo, welcome back to Thug Notes.
This week we turning up the heat with Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
In a bleak-ass depiction of America’s future, a platinum playa named Guy Montag be hustling as a fireman.
But up in this hood, firemen don’t put out no fires.
Naw blood. They strapped with hoses to burn books, cuz them bad boys be straight-up illegal.
After gettin home from the grind, Montag peeps his seventeen year old neighbor Clarisse.
She drops some sick truth that make Montag question the world’s whack-ass ways.
And talkin to this fox make Guy realize that he just ain’t happy wit his life.
Then one day Guy gets word that some old hag been hoardin books,
so he gotta step up and blaze her stash.
When he busts in and starts spittin that venomous kerosene, he secretly jacks a book and pockets it.
But before his boys can start smokin her spot, this girl lights a match and straight burns herself down with her books.
Dayum! Now that’s gangsta.
Next day, Montag’s bossman, Beatty, rolls up to his crib all unannounced.
He starts mad doggin my boy Montag, sayin that if he be packin books, he better come clean in 24 hours.
But first, Guy wanna know if the answer to his unhappiness lay in these books.
So he hits up some scrappy english professor named Faber
and learns that the book he swiped be one of the last known copies of the Bible.
Later Beatty calls Guy out on his sh*t and commands him to burn his own crib down.
Turns out, Montag’s wife Mildred ratted him out.
After Guy smokes his own pad, Beatty tries to arrest him, but BAM —
Guy turns his hose on Beatty and that fool is toast. But before Guy can flee the scene,
a creepy robot dog that the fuzz use to hunt book lovers shanks Montag as he try to escape.
My man shakes off dat Hound and bails before the po po can nab him.
As Montag runnin from the police, he finds that fool Faber
who tells him where to find a gang of scholarly hoods who be tryin to preserve the knowledge of the old world.
Montag finds these playas, who say they dedicated themselves to memorizing books
for when the world is ready for them again.
With parts of the Bible deep in his dome,
Guy joins their ranks and starts rollin toward the city, where he gonna help em rebuild society.
Most homies always goin off on how the main theme of this book is censorship through book burning.
But if you keepin it gangsta, you know that Bradbury’s main jam actually be the creation of a mass culture.
As technology got mo legit, the world got smaller and minority voices got louder.
So to prevent these whiny bitches from gettin all butt-hurt,
a super PC culture was created to keep any playa from spittin truth that some homies just can’t handle.
But it ain’t only da government that’s to blame. Naw, bruh.
Ray Ray be criticizin how Americans always jonesin for things to be simple and positive, even if it's all bullsh*t.
Peep game at this irony mayne:
Most cats thinkin that with betta technology comes a more connected society.
But on the real, Braddy-B sayin that just cuz we got the baddest gear,
don’t mean it gonna bring us any closer to each other.
My boy Heidegger droppin the same game in his essay The Thing:
"All distances in space and time are shrinking... yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness."
For example, when Mildred ODs and needs to get her stomach pumped,
there be all kinds of machines all up in her insides, yet the playas that be operating on her just don’t give a damn.
Like Montag says, “Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you.”
But don’t be thinkin it’s all bad, baby cuz it ain’t. Ol Guy is a walking symbol for the hope of mankind’s rebirth.
See, in German, Montag straight up means Monday,
suggestin that Montag gonna usher in a new beginning for humanity.
And respect this, son: peeps be thinkin that the title of the book’s final section, “Burning Bright,”
references a poem by William Blake called “The Tiger”. Check it:
"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
Just like Blake’s tiger that reppin both beauty and savagery,
dat boy Montag burning bright as a symbol of both creation and destruction.
Cuz the playa who used to sling fire to burn books now only blazes with the flame of knowledge.
Look, blood. You just ain’t gettin it til you peep the dankest motif of this whole book: the motif of burning.
On one hand, fire be representin the destructive nature of dis whack society, but it would be straight up remiss
of yo bitch ass not to think about how fire also representin the hopeful glow of the human spirit.
Like da light of the campfire at the end, flame don’t just burn — it also gives off warmth.
Yo thanks for watching Thug Notes. Stay fly and hit subscribe.