If there is one time period that Fahrenheit 451 does not seem to hold a connection to, it is Rationalism. Ray Bradbury's novel develops a futuristic distopia where knowledge, reading, and discovery are forbidden. Books are burned, and possession of them is a crime. To the modern reader, the Post Modern story is entirely fantasy, even though it serves as a warning to hold on to words and to knowledge tightly through the ever faster shifting winds of technology. Bradbury uses a great deal of creative liberty to assume dramatic results and devastating consequences for protagonist Guy Montag's world of ignorance. The novel therefore is more a rejection of Rationalism than an example of it, even though it defends the needs for both rational and creative thought.
Rationalism defines the world in a logical and realistic way, which requires one to view the world through reason rather than imagination. The opposite of ideas inspired Bradbury. Where Rationalism focuses on the retelling of true events as the means of conveying a point, Romanticism - imagination, fantasy, nature, and fiction - uses pure imagination to "drive home" its point. Bradbury rejects to former for the use of the latter, much in the way that his nineteenth century predecessors rejected the same. For Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury chose the most effective style of Literature.
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