Farenheit 451

    This week at the Athena, I chose to watch Farenheit 451.  I chose this movie out of the three because the trailer for it looked the most interesting.  After watching this movie I am very glad that I chose this one over the other two.  Despite the few downsides such as poor special effects and some questionable acting (both of these due to the fact that it is a much older movie), the overall story and message of the movie was pretty good.
    The movie takes place in a futuristic setting in which firemen no longer put out fires.  Instead, they create them.  Books are now illegal and it is the firemen’s job to find any remaining books and burn them.  The books are illegal because they are believed to only cause trouble and make people unhappy.  Instead of reading books, everyone watches TV instead and refer to the television as part of the family.  The TV announcers are known as cousins.  Anyone caught with a book is arrested and in many cases, their house is burned down.  Despite these consequences, there are a still people who try to keep and hide books.
    The character of whom this entire movie is about is a fireman named Montag.  He starts off the movie believing that books are no good and they must be burned.  It is not until one of the girls in his neighborhood starts talking to him that he starts to question whether or not he is doing the right thing by burning books.  As the story progresses, Montag is found stealing books that he is told to burn and reading them on his own.  The firemen find out and Montag is about to be arrested when he kills his superior and runs.  He flees for his life and finds a hidden society of people who devote their lives to memorizing a book so they may one day do good with the information they have.  Montag finds that the girl in his neighborhood (the one that made him question himself) is also part of this society and he too decides to devote his life to a book.  The movie ends peacefully with Montag walking through the forrest working on memorizing on of the books he stole rather than burned.