109 Fun Facts About Fahrenheit 451

In Fahrenheit 451, why are firemen no longer needed to put out fires?

Houses are fireproof. Once every home had been fireproofed, the novel explains, the firemen were handed a new job: starting fires instead of putting them out.

What is the first name of Montag, the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451?

Guy. He opens the novel finding it 'a pleasure to burn' and ends it a hunted man trying to keep a book alive in his own memory.

According to the novel's title page, 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which what happens?

Book paper catches fire, and burns, runs the line on the title page. Montag wears the number on his helmet, and it marks the tanks from which the firemen pump kerosene instead of water.

Bradbury long refused to allow Fahrenheit 451 in which format?

E-book. Bradbury said e-books 'smell like burned fuel', and he gave way only in 2011, aged 91, when his publisher would not renew the contract without the digital rights.

Fahrenheit 451 grew out of which 1951 novella Bradbury published in Galaxy Science Fiction?

The Fireman. Galaxy ran the novella in February 1951, and two years later Bradbury doubled its length into a novel for Ballantine Books.

Bradbury's short story 'The Pedestrian', a seed of Fahrenheit 451, was inspired by his late-night run-in with whom?

A police officer. Stopped while out walking late one night and asked what he was doing, Bradbury answered 'Putting one foot in front of the other', which did not go down well.

Bradbury typed the story that became Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in which university's library?

UCLA. In a basement typing room of its library, Bradbury fed the typewriter a dime every half hour and typed, he said, 'like hell' to beat the clock.

Bradbury typed the first draft of what became Fahrenheit 451 in about how long?

Nine days. The typewriter was rented by the half hour, a dime at a time, so he typed flat out and came away with a 25,000-word novella.

Fahrenheit 451 was published at the height of which period of American politics?

The McCarthy era. The novel came out in October 1953, and Bradbury recalled that magazines, 'running scared' of the senator, would not print excerpts until a newly launched one took the chance.

Who told Bradbury the temperature that gave Fahrenheit 451 its title?

The fire department. In January 1953 Bradbury rang several university physics and chemistry departments without success, then got his number from the firefighters in a single call.

What is the title of the first part of Fahrenheit 451?

The Hearth and the Salamander. Both are fire images: the hearth warms a home, while the salamander, the firemen's badge and the name of their engine, was said in ancient myth to survive flames.

What is Part Two of Fahrenheit 451 called?

The Sieve and the Sand. The title comes from a boyhood memory: Montag was promised a dime if he could fill a sieve with sand, and feels the same futility trying to memorise a book on the subway.

The third and final part of Fahrenheit 451 is called what?

Burning Bright. Fire changes meaning in this last part: on the run, Montag comes upon men warming their hands at a campfire and sees for the first time that flames can give as well as take.

In Fahrenheit 451, what does Clarisse rub under Montag's chin to test whether he is in love?

A dandelion. It leaves yellow on her own chin but none on his, and her verdict that he is not in love with anyone leaves the married Montag first indignant, then shaken.

In Fahrenheit 451, how does Clarisse die, according to Mildred?

Hit by a speeding car. Mildred mentions it only in passing, four days after the event, because she had simply forgotten to tell him.

In Fahrenheit 451, what has Mildred done when Montag comes home from first meeting Clarisse?

Overdosed on sleeping pills. Two technicians pump her stomach, replace her blood and rush off to the next of the night's many such calls, and by morning she denies it ever happened.

In Fahrenheit 451, what does Mildred call the characters on the wall-sized screens she watches all day?

Her 'family'. Asked to switch the parlour off because Montag is ill, she answers 'That's my family', agrees only to turn it down, and then does not even do that.

In Fahrenheit 451, what are Mildred's 'Seashells'?

In-ear radio headphones. Mildred keeps them in even in bed, so that Montag imagines having to buy a Seashell broadcasting station just to get a word through to his own wife.

In Fahrenheit 451, what can neither Montag nor Mildred recall about their ten-year marriage?

Where they first met. Mildred laughs the question off, but it haunts Montag, and the answer, Chicago, comes back to him only in the novel's final pages.

What does the old woman do when Fahrenheit 451's firemen come for her books?

Lights a match and burns with them. She strikes the kitchen match herself before the firemen can light the kerosene, and Montag cannot get her out of his mind.

In Fahrenheit 451, where has Montag hidden the books he has stolen over the past year?

Behind a ventilator grille. Montag climbs on a chair in the hall and pulls about twenty books out of the air-conditioning duct, and a panicked Mildred runs with one for the kitchen incinerator.

In Fahrenheit 451, how does the Mechanical Hound subdue the prey it catches?

With a drugged needle. The eight-legged Hound pins its target and injects morphine or procaine from a four-inch needle in its snout, and bored firemen bet on it catching rats and cats.

In Fahrenheit 451, who is Beatty?

Montag's fire chief. He turns up at Montag's bedside the day Montag stays home from work, and warns that any of his men who takes a book home gets twenty-four hours to burn it himself.

In Fahrenheit 451, what does Beatty reveal about his own past?

He was once an enthusiastic reader. He taunts Montag with a barrage of quotations, then says books contradict one another so badly that the reader comes away lost.

In Fahrenheit 451, what was Faber, the old man Montag turns to for help, before books were banned?

An English professor. He lost his post forty years earlier, when the last liberal arts college closed for want of students, and calls himself a coward for having said nothing.

In Fahrenheit 451, how does Montag force the frightened Faber to help him?

By tearing pages out of the Bible. Montag believes it may be the last copy in that part of the world, so Faber gives in, and equips him with a tiny two-way communicator he has built.

In Fahrenheit 451, which poem does Montag read aloud to Mildred's friends, reducing one of them to tears?

Dover Beach. Matthew Arnold's vision of a world without joy, love or light sets Mrs Phelps sobbing, while Mrs Bowles rounds on Montag for his 'silly awful hurting words'.

In Fahrenheit 451, where does the fire engine go on the alarm that ends Part Two?

Montag's own house. Mildred had turned in the alarm herself, after her friends had already reported him for reading poetry at them, and she leaves by taxi without a word to him.

In Fahrenheit 451, how does Montag kill Beatty?

With a flamethrower. Beatty keeps goading him even with the nozzle pointed his way, and Montag later decides the man had wanted to die.

In Fahrenheit 451, how does Montag finally shake off the second Mechanical Hound?

He floats down a river. The televised chase still needs an ending, so the cameras follow the Hound to an innocent man out walking and announce that Montag is dead.

In Fahrenheit 451, whom does Faber leave for St. Louis to see?

A retired printer. He and Montag have talked of printing books again, and Faber sets off on the five a.m. bus with the money Montag has pressed on him.

In Fahrenheit 451, who leads the exiled book lovers Montag joins in the countryside?

Granger. He likens mankind to the phoenix, forever burning itself up and rising again, but with one advantage over the bird: people can remember their mistakes.

In Fahrenheit 451, Montag becomes the book people's backup copy of which Bible book?

Ecclesiastes. Montag protests that he has forgotten every word, but the verses come back unbidden on the last page: 'To everything there is a season.'

How does the war in Fahrenheit 451 end?

The city is annihilated by bombers in a single night. Montag watches from the countryside as the war starts and finishes almost at once, and the survivors turn back towards the ruins to rebuild.

A special run of 200 signed copies of Fahrenheit 451's first hardback was bound in what?

Asbestos. The 200 copies were bound in Johns-Manville Quinterra, an asbestos material, giving a novel about book burning a cover that would not burn.

Fahrenheit 451 was serialised in the March, April and May 1954 issues of which new magazine?

Playboy. A young Chicago editor named Hugh Hefner bought the novel for his newborn magazine, whose first issue had appeared only in December 1953.

From 1967, Ballantine quietly sold an expurgated edition of Fahrenheit 451 aimed at whom?

High school students. Editors cut words such as 'hell', 'damn' and 'abortion' from a novel about censorship, and from 1973 to 1979 theirs was the only version Ballantine sold.

In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen's rule book credits which Founding Father with starting the fire brigades?

Benjamin Franklin. The rule book says the brigades were set up in 1790 to burn English-influenced books, recasting the man who helped found a real fire company as the first book burner.

Bradbury's 1979 Coda to Fahrenheit 451 warns of 'more than one way to burn a book' and first blames whom?

Every minority with a grievance, in Bradbury's view: his list runs from Baptists and Unitarians to Zen Buddhists and Republicans, all 'running about with lit matches', before he turns on meddling editors.

In a 2007 interview, Bradbury brushed aside censorship and said Fahrenheit 451 is really about what?

Television killing off reading. Bradbury complained that television deals only in 'factoids', and he said so sitting beside a giant flat-panel set of the kind his novel had imagined in 1953.

Bradbury pointed out that Fahrenheit 451's Faber shares his name with a maker of what?

Pencils. Bradbury said he noticed only decades later that he had named Faber after a pencil maker and Montag after a paper company, and credited his sly subconscious for keeping it from him.

At the end of Fahrenheit 451, the exiles' leader says the first thing to build is a factory making what?

Mirrors. He wants a factory turning out nothing but mirrors for a year, so that people can take a long look at themselves before they rebuild anything else.

Which star of the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451 plays both Clarisse and Montag's wife?

Julie Christie. She plays the wife, renamed Linda, and a Clarisse who does not die but escapes to the book people, an ending Bradbury liked enough to borrow for his own stage version.

Who played Montag in François Truffaut's 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451?

Oskar Werner. He and Truffaut clashed throughout the shoot, and the director later said Werner was the only actor he had ever had real trouble with.

Which Hitchcock composer scored François Truffaut's 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451?

Bernard Herrmann. Asked why he had not hired an avant-garde composer, Truffaut said such men would give him the music of the twentieth century, but Herrmann the music of the twenty-first.

How are the opening credits of Truffaut's 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451 presented?

Spoken aloud by a narrator. The film shows no printed credits at all, a choice usually read as the director's nod to a society in which reading is banned.

Who starred as Montag in HBO's 2018 film of Fahrenheit 451, directed by Ramin Bahrani?

Michael B. Jordan. He was also an executive producer of the film, which reworks Clarisse as an informant and casts Michael Shannon as Beatty.

How did Bradbury's lawsuit against CBS over a 1957 TV play resembling Fahrenheit 451 finally end?

He won on appeal. A trial court first sided with CBS over 'A Sound of Different Drummers', a Playhouse 90 drama about a book-hunting officer who starts to read; the appeal reversed that in 1961.

In the 1984 Fahrenheit 451 computer game, Montag must break into which library?

The New York Public Library. The game is a sequel to the novel: Montag, still a fugitive, gets inside and finds Clarisse, who in this version turns out to be alive.

Bradbury demanded that which filmmaker rename a 2004 documentary whose title echoed Fahrenheit 451?

Michael Moore. Bradbury complained that Moore had taken the title of Fahrenheit 9/11 without asking and wanted it changed, but the film went out under that name anyway.

Which award did Fahrenheit 451 win in 2004, half a century late?

A Hugo Award. No Hugos were presented in 1954, so the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention in Boston voted 'Retro Hugos' for that year, and Bradbury's novel took best novel.

Bradbury's own 1976 audiobook reading of Fahrenheit 451 earned him a nomination for what?

A Spoken Word Grammy. The format suited the novel, whose exiles keep banned books alive by memorising them and passing them on by word of mouth.

Clarisse says houses in Fahrenheit 451 lost what, to stop people sitting and talking?

Front porches. Clarisse has heard that architects blamed their looks, but that the real aim was to stop neighbours sitting out at night, talking and thinking: 'the wrong kind of social life'.

Many immersive-sim video games carry which detail, often read as a nod to Fahrenheit 451?

'0451' as the first door code. It dates back to 1994's System Shock, and later studios have kept reusing it as a signature that links their games to that one's makers, Looking Glass.

Fahrenheit 451 opens with an epigraph that begins 'If they give you ruled paper' and ends how?

Write the other way. The line is by the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Bradbury set it above the first page as a motto for a novel about refusing to do as you are told.

Unable to afford college, where did the young Bradbury educate himself, feeding his passion for books?

He was frustrated that libraries then refused to stock H. G. Wells as insufficiently literary, and learning of the Library of Alexandria's destruction left a deep mark.

In Fahrenheit 451, which relative told Clarisse always to give her age as 'seventeen and insane'?

Her uncle. Clarisse cheerfully repeats his advice on first meeting Montag, though she will not actually turn seventeen for another month.

Ballantine's expurgated edition of Fahrenheit 451 changed a 'drunk man' into what?

A sick man. The same edition turned a line about cleaning fluff from a navel into one about cleaning ears, and when Bradbury found out he made the publisher restore his original text.

Which 1998 real-time strategy game names one of its terran 'firebat' hero units after Montag?

StarCraft. Its firebats are terran infantry who fight with fire, a fitting unit to carry the name of Bradbury's book-burning hero.

In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen's rule book names which Founding Father as America's first fireman?

Benjamin Franklin is the rule book's first fireman, recast as a patriot who torched books from Britain. The real Franklin founded a volunteer company in 1736 that put fires out.

Ray Bradbury took the number in the title Fahrenheit 451 from a fact supplied by which expert?

A fire chief supplied the number when Bradbury asked. He wrote the novel in a library study room, on typewriters hired out by the half hour.

In Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse says her uncle was jailed for two days for doing what on a highway?

Driving too slowly, at forty miles an hour, was the offence. Clarisse says drivers go so fast that they know grass only as a green blur and a rose garden as a pink one.

The web error code HTTP 451, a tribute to Fahrenheit 451, tells users a page is blocked for what?

Legal reasons, such as a government order to censor a page, trigger the code. Many US news sites began showing it to European visitors rather than comply with a new privacy law.

Whose purges did Ray Bradbury sum up as 'They burned the authors instead of the books'?

Joseph Stalin had writers and poets arrested and often executed in the Great Purge, a repression Bradbury counted among the forces that pushed him to write the novel.

Which three-word question does Clarisse leave Montag with after their first walk in Fahrenheit 451?

'Are you happy?' she asks, then runs indoors before he can answer. By the time Montag reaches his cold, dark bedroom he has realised that he is not.

In Fahrenheit 451, what do the book people do with each volume once they have memorised it?

Burn it themselves, since keeping the pages was too dangerous. Thousands like them are lying low across the country, each waiting to recite a text so it can be written down again.

Who betrays Montag to the firemen in Fahrenheit 451, then leaves in a taxi without a word to him?

His wife raised the alarm, and her friends had reported him too. She walks out too shaken even to acknowledge him and is driven away.

How does the televised manhunt for Montag end in Fahrenheit 451 once the authorities lose his trail?

An innocent man is killed on camera, his face kept out of focus, and the announcer declares Montag dead. A scapegoat was needed so that viewers would never learn he got away.

In Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse rubs a dandelion under Montag's chin to find out what about him?

Whether he is in love is the test, and it says he is not. Montag is upset and insists that he is, though he later admits to himself that he no longer loves Mildred.

Which opening line of Fahrenheit 451 later named a collection of Ray Bradbury's stories?

'It was a pleasure to burn' is the entire first sentence. The collection that took its name gathers sixteen stories in which Bradbury worked out the novel's ideas.

Which fuel do the firemen of Fahrenheit 451 pump into a house before setting its books alight?

Kerosene is pumped through the rooms once the books are piled up. At one house Captain Beatty stands in the fumes with his igniter and counts to ten while the owner refuses to leave.

Which addition to the parlour does Mildred complain she still lacks early in Fahrenheit 451?

A fourth TV wall would complete the room, since three walls are already screens. The show she is about to watch even lets her take part.

In Fahrenheit 451, what does Captain Beatty say left firefighters with no blazes to put out?

Fireproof buildings made the old job pointless, so the government turned firemen into officers of society's peace of mind who start fires instead.

What does Faber build and give Montag in Fahrenheit 451 so he can coach him in secret?

A two-way earpiece lets Faber hear whatever Montag hears and talk him through difficult moments. He uses it to read to Montag on the subway ride home.

After killing Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, what does Montag suddenly feel certain about him?

He had wanted to die, Montag decides, since Beatty went on goading him and had put the weapon in his hands himself.

What does Faber call himself in Fahrenheit 451 for staying silent as society turned against books?

A coward, he says, because he saw the way society was changing long ago and never spoke up. He is still frightened when Montag turns up at his door.

How do the firemen of Fahrenheit 451 pass the time at the firehouse while waiting for an alarm?

Playing cards is their routine upstairs. Montag is at the table when a news bulletin warns that war may be declared at any moment.

Where did Montag first meet Faber, a year before turning to him for help in Fahrenheit 451?

In a park, where the old man was fearful at first but grew secure enough to recite poetry. He ended the talk by giving Montag his phone number.

Bradbury called Fahrenheit 451 his only science fiction; which earlier book did he label fantasy?

The Martian Chronicles was fantasy, he argued, because it could not happen. He compared it to a Greek myth and said that was why it would be around for a long time.

On the run in Fahrenheit 451, what does Montag do at the house of fellow fireman Black?

Plants books and reports him, hoping to cast suspicion on firemen in general. It is the sabotage he and Faber had talked over, carried out alone.

What does the drink the book people hand Montag do to protect him from the Hound in Fahrenheit 451?

Alters his sweat: the drink changes its chemical make-up, leaving the Hound no scent to follow. The men at the campfire had watched the chase on a portable TV and were expecting him.

In Fahrenheit 451, the line Montag reads Mildred about dying over how to break eggs is from which book?

Gulliver's Travels supplies it: eleven thousand people are said to have died rather than break their eggs at the smaller end. One of the book people Montag later meets has memorised Swift.

At the end of Fahrenheit 451, what does the leader of the book people say survivors should build first?

A mirror factory, putting out nothing but mirrors for a year so that everyone can take a long look in them. When strangers ask what his group is doing, he says, the answer is: remembering.

Fleeing the city in Fahrenheit 451, what does Montag follow across country to find the book people?

Old railroad tracks lead him to five old men warming themselves at a fire. Faber had told him the abandoned line was home to refugee intellectuals living as hoboes.

Before Montag destroys the first Mechanical Hound in Fahrenheit 451, what does it manage to do to him?

Numb one of his legs: its needle gets a dose of anaesthetic into him before the machine burns. Montag has to hobble away on one good leg to collect the books he hid in the garden.

Near the end of Fahrenheit 451, which city does Montag finally recall as the place he met Mildred?

Chicago comes back to him at last. Neither he nor Mildred could remember when he asked her in bed one night, a blank that summed up their empty life together.

On the subway in Fahrenheit 451, an advert for which product stops Montag memorising a passage?

Toothpaste is the product, and the jingle drowns out the page until Montag leaps up screaming at it to shut up, alarming the other passengers.

In Fahrenheit 451, why do Mildred's friends say they voted for President Noble over his rival?

He looked nicer, and the losing candidate was fat. The women are just as breezy about the coming war: one says that if her soldier husband is killed she will simply marry again.

The pay typewriter on which Bradbury drafted Fahrenheit 451 needed which coin every half hour?

A dime bought thirty minutes, and the first draft cost him $9.80 in rental fees. He typed in a study room set aside for the purpose in a university library.

In 1994, what did Ray Bradbury call 'the real enemy these days', saying it made Fahrenheit 451 work even better?

Political correctness, he said, amounted to thought control and freedom of speech control. Decades earlier he had named the threat of book burning in America as his reason for writing.

Texas parents tried to have Fahrenheit 451 dropped after it was assigned in class during which annual event?

Banned Books Week was under way when the 10th-grader was assigned the novel. She stopped several pages in over its language, and her parents also protested its violence and its depiction of firemen.

Which award for libertarian science fiction has Fahrenheit 451 in its Hall of Fame for classic works?

The Prometheus keeps a Hall of Fame for classic libertarian and anti-authoritarian fiction. Entries must be at least twenty years old, and each winner receives a plaque set with a gold coin.

Which actor plays Captain Beatty in the 2018 HBO film of Fahrenheit 451, directed by Ramin Bahrani?

Michael Shannon plays him. In this version Beatty was among the firemen who once beat Montag's father for reading, and the film ends with him setting Montag on fire.

In HBO's 2018 Fahrenheit 451, where have the rebels stored every book they hope to smuggle abroad?

In a starling's DNA: the bird is bound for Canada, where scientists will extract the code and pass it on to other animals. Montag's task is to fit it with a stolen transponder.

Which change in the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451 did Bradbury like enough to write into his stage play?

Clarisse survives in the film, a schoolteacher who ends up living among the exiles. Far from being displeased, Bradbury liked the new ending so much that he wrote it into his stage version.

In the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451, Montag chooses to memorise the tales of which American author?

Edgar Allan Poe is his choice, and Tales of Mystery and Imagination the book he sets out to become. Bradbury's own stage version likewise ends with Montag as Poe.

In the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451, which Dickens novel is the first book Montag secretly reads at home?

David Copperfield is where he starts. Later he forces a roomful of guests to sit through a passage from it, and one of them breaks down crying.

What unplanned weather hit the final Book People scene of the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451?

A snowstorm, rare and unexpected for mid-April, blew in on the day the scene was shot on location near the studio. It happened to be Julie Christie's birthday.

Besides being his only film not in French, the 1966 Fahrenheit 451 was its director's first feature shot how?

In colour, though not everyone was won over: the critic Bosley Crowther complained that the dazzling colour only made a dull picture more sullen.

What treat did Bradbury's editor ply him with while they went over the Fahrenheit 451 manuscript?

Ice cream, in copious doses, kept the sweet-toothed perfectionist going. The editor who flew out to work with him later spent many years as a magazine film critic.

In Fahrenheit 451, what do the book people modestly call themselves, 'of no significance otherwise'?

Dust jackets for books is the phrase, a guard against feeling superior to anyone. If the cities are not ready to listen, they mean to hand the texts on to the next generation.

Which work has the leader of the book people in Fahrenheit 451 memorised, making him its living copy?

Plato's Republic is the leader's own text. He introduces the men round the fire by the authors they carry, and another of them is Marcus Aurelius.

For sport, what do the firemen of Fahrenheit 451 let loose for the Mechanical Hound to hunt?

Rats are released so the men can watch the hunt, which ends with an injection of morphine or procaine. Montag does not usually take part.

During the manhunt in Fahrenheit 451, what is every household in one district told to do at once?

Look outside together: everyone in every house was to open a front or rear door or look from a window, so that the only man running alone in the city could not be missed.

In Fahrenheit 451, whom do the authorities make Clarisse see because she thinks for herself?

A psychiatrist sees her regularly. Montag sends her off to an appointment just after she remarks how strange it is that someone like him should be a fireman.

Which label has her school pinned on Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451, so that she no longer attends?

Antisocial is the school's word for a girl who would rather talk and observe people than join in. The lessons she describes are TV class, sports and memorised answers.

In Fahrenheit 451, Faber says many men in the hobo camps outside the city hold degrees from where?

Harvard, says Faber, sending Montag off to find refugee intellectuals living rough. Montag leaves him his remaining money, and Faber plans to visit a retired printer.

In the 2018 HBO film of Fahrenheit 451, by what nickname are the outcasts who still read books known?

Eels is the regime's word for them. Montag stops burning a stash of books when he remembers that his own father was beaten for being one.

Mildred Montag was given which new first name in the 1966 film of Fahrenheit 451?

Linda is her name on screen. In the film Montag rounds on her and her friends, calling them zombies who are only killing time instead of living.