This is a great dystopian novel, as you would expect from its reputation. It is an idea which I think will always be current, the idea that people are becoming lazier and less interested in reading, critical thinking and 'intellectual' pursuits. It is not a dystopia that comes from the top down, rather it is the government who exploit a 'weakness' in the population.
I like the way Bradbury writes, it is to the point and the narrative is concise. I did have a problem with the women in the novel though. There is a 17 year old girl who is the catalyst for the 'awakening' of our main character. She is a trope, bright, engaging 'pleasing' in every way to the hero and makes him feel special whilst making him think, she's a bit like a puppy, waiting for him as he goes to and from work and softening his heart. The other women (it is even worse that one of them is his wife) are held in complete contempt by our hero. They are symptoms of the system, in that they fall for all the new, vapid entertainment and have no free thought. The men are all complicit or in control or activists. The women have no agency and the reader is asked to hate them for it. In reality they are victims of a system which, if all the other roles in the novel are to be believed, was built and is maintained by men.
