Book Review

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is hard to find precise words to describe a book as profound and outstanding as this one. This dystopian story allows the reader to question our current world: people are distracted by shallow commercials and superficial TV shows while real connections between individuals are lacking. In addition, everyone seems doomed to live like a zombie, brainwashed by what the owners of power want anyone to be, think, buy, hate, or love.

In **Fahrenheit 451, the books are forbidden and hated, and no one can say why or how it all began; there are no inquiries about what goes on beneath the surface, but Clarisse, the young neighbor Guy Montag meets one day changes his life. She breaks the zombie spell of Montag, a fireman who lived like a robot with the sole purpose of burning books. Clarisse showed him another unique lifestyle: she enjoyed chatting with her family, walking around the city alone, reading books, and asking questions about everything, all things that no one but her family did anymore. As a result, Clarisse was stigmatized as crazy and sent to a psychiatrist when she was one of the few caring people, someone connected to humanity, who had a soul inside. But she was dangerous to the system and had to be eliminated.

As the book unfolds, Montag begins to wonder about his reality and existence to somehow become revolutionary like Clarisse, sharing the same ideas against the imposed reality. His changes bring the story to an unpredictable turn upon his awakening.

I rated it 5 out of 5 because the story is very original and well-developed, as are the characters, and it questions life; it is impressive to note how, nowadays, there are several similarities with this book, which reflect how trivial and heartless our societies are becoming.

**The title Fahrenheit 451 holds a significant symbolism. It refers to the exact temperature at which a book burns, a chilling reminder of the society depicted in the book, where knowledge and free thought are suppressed and destroyed.

View all my reviews

Book Review

Introducing Jung: A Graphic Guide by Maggie Hyde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Even though the book is supposed to be an introduction for beginners, a kind of guide for dummies, it gives a lot of complex information. The book tries to explain all the main ideas of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology, such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, the conscious, and the unconscious. Moreover, the text is a little difficult to digest, as is the whole concept that the Jungian world and its Analytical Psychology bring to knowledge. 

As a new reader of Jung, I find it hard not to want to learn more and to go deeper into subjects about how the Ego and the shadow work, among other concepts. For example, the book explains how the Ego represents the light of consciousness and the Shadow as its own “dark side,” which the Ego wishes to hide from others, meaning the unconscious. Furthermore, it names the alchemical studies, how the alchemist named Unus Mundus, “One World,” the union of psyche and matter (spirit, soul, and body), an experience of oneness that Jung attempted to elucidate through his concept of synchronicity.

Synchronicity is a concept of meaningful coincidences, a causal connection between psychic states and objective events; it is an inconstant connection through ‘meaning,’ while causality is seen as a constant connection through effect. 

Introducing Jung: The Graphic Guide explains the trinity of classical physics: time, space, and causality, plus how Jung wanted to add synchronicity as a fourth term. Other main topics are developed, and underlying main ideas might continue until the end of the book.

Nevertheless, despite the difficulty of understanding this guide, a curious mind may eventually want to become a Jung pupil by finally trying to understand everything and keep digging into his books.

View all my reviews