Analyzing Faber's Fahrenheit 451

In Fahrenheit 451, the character Faber is an older man who used to be an English professor. He secretly reads books, and discusses the value of them with Montag, the protagonist. Faber says 3 things give books their value. The first is “quality”. He believes that for a book to have quality, they must have pores, or they must have intricate detail that reflects the complexity of life. Faber states that an author is “more ‘literary’” when they “..truthfully [records] details of life..”(79). The next characteristic is leisure, or more specifically time to take the book in and think. Faber compares reading to playing God, meaning “you can shut them,say, ‘Hold on a moment’”(80). By doing that, a reader can correctly analyze the content, as opposed

The forms may be music, television, even the internet. In each of these we find examples that explore our collective human experience and when they are “put under the microscope [you] find life under the glass”(79). You can also find examples that are shallow and superficial. When Faber’s definition of quality is applied to music, a song like The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” is low quality, with the lyrics being repetitive and if you put it “under the microscope” you would find nothing. If looked at from Faber’s perspective a song like “Yesterday”, also by The Beatles, would be of a higher quality because it shows “the pores on the face of life” and displaying a much higher sense of maturity. However, while his definitions can be applied to books and other media, it is not entirely accurate in my opinion. While books that reflect true life are profound, works that don’t are not automatically of low quality. Novels that are pure fiction can be used as an escape by readers, and can be just for fun. In the context of the novel, books like these would be a bad thing because it would blind the citizens as much as the TV parlor. But in our world, books that explore fantasy worlds can also be seen as high