Review -- Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" by Tim Hamilton

A couple of months ago, I acquired a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It felt almost surreal holding the graphic novel in my hands. I first read the novel in high school as part of the curriculum. While many people think it is a novel about government censorship, they're wrong. Mr. Bradbury himself says that the book is about television dumbing things down by reducing information into "factoids." When I first heard this, I was shocked, because like most people, I was taught in English class that it was an anti-government censorship novel, almost akin to Orwell's 1984. But where does that leave us with this graphic novel adaptation? Is it a successful adaptation, or is some of the power behind Bradbury's words lost in the translation?

Let's start with the front cover. Right under the title, it says, "The Authorized Adaptation" and  "Introduction by Ray Bradbury." So this adaptation came about with Bradbury's blessings. Even if he did nothing other than giving the green light on the project, no critiques, no input--he's still attached to the project, and therefore some of the blame falls upon him.

For the most part, the plot is all there. Guy Montag is a fireman, but in his world, firemen are people who start fires rather than put them out. They burn books, novels, short stories, political treatises, any printed word. Montag enjoys his work until he meets seventeen year old Clarisse. She plants the seeds of doubt in Montag's head that eventually lead to him turning his back on everything he thought he knew. On the surface, it really does look like this book (graphic novel) is a condemnation of government censorship. However, there are certain passages that undermine that assumption.

Captain Beatty tells Montag a brief (especially since it has to be condensed for the graphic novel format) history of society and how the current system came to be. There was no heavy-handed government passing down decrees. No, it was modern technology (read: television) and an immensely-diverse-where-everybody-is-a-minority society that made people turn against books: "Then in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Condensations. Digests. Everything boils down to the snap ending. Classics cut to fill a two-minute book column" (47). Or perhaps this poignant gem that comes on the next page, "The bigger your market, the less you handle controversy... No wonder books topped selling. The public, knowing what it wanted, let the comic books survive" (48, emphasis mine).

Holy crap. Look at that sentence--comics! And what medium am I reading that statement in? A comic! Some might argue that a comic is different than a graphic novel, and there is some merit to that argument. After all, this adaptation is over 150 pages long, no mere penny dreadful.

Where does this leave us? Back in 1953, Bradbury imagined full-color televisions taking up entire parlor "walls" where some families have three of them in the same room. How eerily prophetic his vision appears when viewed with the hindsight 2010 gives us.

There's such a contradiction inherent in this graphic novel. Because of the medium's restraints, Bradbury's point is easier to find, but at the same time, does it need to be easier to find? By spoon-feeding it to readers doesn't that do exactly the thing he warns against in his novel? While I'm all for considering graphic novels a legitimate artistic medium, I don't know if they're the best home for novel adaptations. I'm sure there are stories that can only be told through the combination of text and images. However, novels are designed from the beginning to rely only on the written word, shoe-horning them into the graphic novel format as seems to be the case with Fahrenheit 451 strips them of most of their power.

But that's enough of that. Let's look at this strictly as a graphic novel. Does it work there? Yes and no. The writing is tight, and the plot is easy to follow. However, there are problems with the art style. The color palette uses mostly yellows, oranges, reds, and blacks. I understand that choice. It mirrors the flames that Montag uses to burn books. Then there are other pages that are dominated more by blues and yellows. The scenes after Montag quits the firemen, or when he's with Clarisse are colored that way. The blues calm the fiery nature of the rest of the plot. However, the limited color palette (both the warm and cool pages) make some of the images hard to see. There were multiple times where I had to squint and try to figure out what I was looking at.

It's almost a trade off. Bradbury's message comes through clearer in this format, but the way its actualized through the images is what requires work to decipher. Montag's character isn't drawn in a very striking manner, so half the time I couldn't tell which dark, heavily shadowed figure was him. There were also certain times that it was hard to see who was speaking due to strange speech bubble placement.

Do I recommend this? If you like Bradbury, sure. For graphic novel fans? Probably. I think there are better executed graphic novels out there. But if you're somebody looking to get into Bradbury's fiction for the first time, I'd say no. Read the novel first. It might be "harder," but the payoff is so worth it.