The novels Night and Fahrenheit 451 both carry messages about how society can be corrupted or destroyed. In the novel Night, the Jews do not listen to warnings about the incoming Germans, and most of them die in the Holocaust as a result, while in Fahrenheit 451, the citizens of that society have blind trust in authority and ignorance which eventually, at the end of the book, leads to the destruction of the society. Even though both books are written about different topics and of different times, they both share common messages about how to avoid the corruption and eventual destruction of a society.
As seen in the novel Night and Fahrenheit 451 , ignorance can perpetuate the destruction of a society by not listening to the warnings of others and therefore not looking at another viewpoint of an idea. This occurs early in the text, when Moishe reappears in the town and warns his fellow Jews of the Germans. However, they disregard these claims, and would rather focus on the pleasures they have in life: “He told me what had happened to him… they were forced to dig trenches. When they were done their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks...How had he, Moishe the Beadle, been able to escape? By a miracle. He was wounded in the leg and left for dead…but people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen.” (Wiesel 7). As seen in this quote Moishe was giving his fellow Jews a warning about the Germans and they refused to listen to him about it. This ignorance caused them later in the book to become victims of the Holocaust. This subclaim can also be supported by Ray Bradbury’s novel Fah...
... middle of paper ...
...the citizens of Germany were looking for a quick solution to their problems, and would not care about right or wrong; they just want peace. Their believing of anti-Semitism fed onto them by the Nazi government shows that they are not questioning the lies and are therefore being unintelligent of the truth and of the world around them.
As you can see there are many reason why a society can fail or get destroyed and it can perpetuate destruction of a society also. When people don’t question authority and when they are ignorant or naive it can lead to the destruction of a society as seen through the two texts of Night and Fahrenheit 451 we can see that it is clearly evident that the destruction of a society is clearly happening if these to are evident.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2013.
In the book Fahrenheit 451 the theme is a society/world that revolves around being basically brain washed or programmed because of the lack of people not thinking for themselves concerning the loss of knowledge, and imagination from books that don't exist to them. In such stories as the Kurt Vonnegut's "You have insulted me letter" also involving censorship to better society from vulgarity and from certain aspects of life that could be seen as disruptive to day to day society which leads to censorship of language and books. Both stories deal with censorship and by that society is destructed in a certain way by the loss of knowledge from books.
At what point can a society be described as dystopian? Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, tells the story of a man named Guy Montag who lives in a dystopian society where life isn’t as great as the government makes it out to be. Our society is slowly becoming more and more similar to the dystopian society found in Fahrenheit 451 in the fact that many families aren’t as stable as most might desire them to be, the government mostly ignores the country’s ideals and only focuses on its own for the sake of its own benefit, and many of society’s ideas are being disrespected or noted as activities that people shouldn’t be allowed to indulge in while in this country through censorship.
The start of the technological revolution was 1975. The first personal computer had just been made available to the public and about ten years later, cellular telephones started to become popular (?). A few people using a cell phone turned into a few dozen people who turned into a few hundred and by 2013, nearly seven billion cellular phones were in use around the world (?). Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury in the 1950s, depicted a future America where the world revolved around technology. Bradbury wrote of a society where intelligence was feared and hated, books were banned, and television controlled most everyone and anything. He was concerned that in the decades to come, the world would be changed by technology
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
Fahrenheit 451’s Relevance to Today Fahrenheit 451’s relevance to today can be very detailed and prophetic when we take a deep look into our American society. Although we are not living in a communist setting with extreme war waging on, we have gained technologies similar to the ones Bradbury spoke of in Fahrenheit 451 and a stubborn civilization that holds an absence of the little things we should enjoy. Bradbury sees the future of America as a dystopia, yet we still hold problematic issues without the title of disaster, as it is well hidden under our democracy today. Fahrenheit 451 is much like our world today, which includes television, the loss of free speech, and the loss of the education and use of books. Patai explains that Bradbury saw that people would soon be controlled by the television and saw it as the creators chance to “replace lived experience” (Patai 2).
...t societies can be weakened or even fall due to political corruption, war, and social injustice. When a society has one of these things, or even all three, it will not be a safe or fun place to live. Citizens will start riots and some will maybe even flee. And honestly, these things are bound to happen. Ultimately, we are doomed… it’s just up to us how long that will take.
The issues the book readers in Fahrenheit 451 faced are very similar to some of the problems the Thirteen Colonies faced while under the reign of King George III. They were oppressed because of their differences, and the leaders of the times were always trying to intimidate people into resignation to their abuse. Faber and Montag's plan to plant books in the other firemen's houses as a plan to fix the discrimination is similar to how the Thirteen Colonies wrote the "Declaration of Independence"
Books and knowledge are one of the essential parts of having power.Throughout history, people have controlled the information and intelligence of the general population to gain control of them. In the novel Fahrenheit 451,government censorship causing a control in knowledge is a prevalent issue. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury conveys that censorship will lead to a much worse society expressed by everyone in society is antisocial, everyone in society is no longer thinking for themselves, and by everyone in society is very short tempered.
“A time to break down, and a time to build up.” Fahrenheit 451 talks about a person named Montag. He is a fireman and his job is to burn books because he lives under a government that doesn’t let anyone own books. All of a sudden, one day after work he meets a girl named Clarisse Mcclellan who turned his whole world around. She gave him a whole different perspective of things and made him wonder about things that he had never even thought about wondering before. He then started to wonder about books and the power that lay within in them. Montag started to feel loyal to books and met Faber who helped Montag take a stand for his belief in books. In this book, the two universal concepts that appeared a lot in this book is totalitarianism when
One of the most prominent themes throughout the book Fahrenheit 451 is the lack of human communication and social relationships. Ray Bradbury, who is the author of the novel, Fahrenheit 451, emphasizes the poor or almost non-existent relationships between many of the characters in the novel. The dilapidation of human contact in this work makes the reader notice an idea that Bradbury is trying to get across. This idea is that human communication is important and can be even considered necessary, even though our technology continues to advance.
When Beatty discusses the past with Montag, Beatty criticizes the education system of the past. “Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.” (52) Beatty disparages the people’s education system because students would come into college and leave with the little to no intellect gained. In the novel, the government has taken over the system deciding the education resulting in the people unable to think for themselves nor others. Society cannot rule over itself without the overarching supremacy of knowledge. Beatty then narrates the insidious downfall of books. “It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!” Following society’s decision to rid the world of books, the government was able to raze the people’s authority and seize complete control. Although this may malign the government, the culture that lost interest in books had already strayed from the path of self-governing. Thus ultimately leading to the self-induced collapse of social infrastructure and the intensification of government involvement in Fahrenheit 451. Knowledge is the backbone of a self-governing society just as roots are to a tree. Without knowledge, a society could not think for
Fahrenheit 451 is a best-selling American novel written by Ray Bradbury. The novel is about firemen Guy Montag and his journey on discovering the importance of knowledge in an ignorant society. There are many important themes present throughout the novel. One of the most distinct and reoccurring themes is ignorance vs knowledge. Bradbury subtly reveals the advantage and disadvantages of knowledge and ignorance by the contrasting characters Montag and his wife Mildred. Montag symbolizes knowledge while Mildred on the other hand symbolizes ignorance.
In Fahrenheit 451, it represents a threat to people and power of knowledge. For example, Beatty states, “‘So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door”(58). In this quote, Beatty is telling Montag about how bad of book and it would ruin people’ happy life. This shows that Fahrenheit 451 books symbolize as the threat to people’s daily life. This proves that symbolism adds a deeper and more complex layer to the novel’s story beause it shows is not peope fear by books but government fears book. There are a lot of ideas in the books, and people would know what they should do, includes against the government. Just like Americans were inspired by John Locke, people would be influence by those ideas after they read the book and do the “right” things. Another example, Fahrenheit 451 states, “‘Mrs. Phelps was crying”(100). In this quote, Milred’s friend, Mrs. Phelps is crying after Montag read ‘Dover Beach’ to them. This shows that Fahrenheit 451 books symbolize as power of knowlege. This proves that symbolism adds a deeper and more complex layer to the novel’s story because a lady, who doesn’t have read any book, is crying for a poem. She didn’t read book before and she doesn’t know what peom is about, but she is crying withou any reason. This shows the influence of the knowlege, even someone doesn’t know it as well, it still can touch people. It is the power of
The Majority of people today believe that the society in Fahrenheit 451 is far-fetched and could never actually happen, little do they know that it is a reflection of the society we currently live in. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 books are burnt due to people's lack of interest in them and the fire is started by firemen. Social interactions is at an all time low and most time is spent in front of the television being brainwashed by advertisements. In an attempt to make us all aware of our faults, Bradbury imagines a society that is a parallel to the world we live in today by emphasizing the decline in literature, loss of ethics in advertisement, and negative effects of materialism.
Much of what the future holds are consequences of the events that have already taken place. Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 is a story about a lifestyle in the future that has evolved from our present, but in a seemingly different world. There is no flow of ideas, and the main purpose in a person's life in those days was to relax, not think, and be happy. Despite the seemingly unreality of the world in the future, the author is using it as a cautionary tale of what may become of our society. Bradbury stresses his views on how best to keep our society's system of government checks and balances, technological advances, and its fluidity of ideas.