Understanding Media in Fahrenheit 451

This paper critically analyzes the problems of understanding media in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) through the methodological lens of Marshall McLuhan’s media theory. What the two have in common is that they each make a prophetic diagnosis about the future of print books. Bradbury’s warning about new media remains valid in the context of today’s media culture. Notably, however, his novel does not reflect the media theory of the second half of the twentieth century, such as McLuhan’s. In order to place and update Bradbury’s warning within the context of media theory from about the 1960s on, this paper employs McLuhan’s perspective as its analytical framework, noting that it was McLuhan who pioneered new developments in media theory as a contemporary of Bradbury in the 1960s. Furthermore, this paper will argue that the understanding of media one infers from Fahrenheit 451 significantly differs from McLuhan’s media theory. This is especially true given that Bradbury did not strictly recognize the media-theoretical differences between oral- and text-based cultures.