Burning the Good Book: Religion and ideology in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

The literary genre of dystopian fiction grew out of the larger science fiction genre during the first half of the 20th century. Distinctive of dystopian fiction is a tendency towards allegory. Books in the genre use allegory to make statements on a wide range of subjects. Dystopian novels often tackle political and religious issues, as well as societal issues more generally. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) most obviously deals with the rise of new media—television in particular—and the potential for manipulation of the populace inherent within this new cultural medium. There are also strong religious themes in Fahrenheit 451, however, and the book includes many references to the Bible. Religious metaphors are also tied to new media at several points throughout the book. This essay explores the representation, in Fahrenheit 451, of religions which exist in our world—primarily Christianity. The theories of Foucault and Althusser on ideology and religion are also applied to the government which rules the United States in the future which the book depicts, and the new media which is under the control of that government. This is done in order to examine the ways in which the ideology of that government, and the way in which it operates, makes it a kind of ‘religion’. Ultimately, the conclusion is drawn that Bradbury celebrates the cultural aspects of religion, and generally depicts Christianity in a favorable light. Simultaneously, he uses the new ‘religion’ of state-run new media to illustrate the danger religion can pose when it is taken to an extreme, and when used as a tool of control and manipulation by the wrong people. Table of