Downside of Technology Exposed in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Not only do people want to keep to themselves, they also seem to be fond of hurting each other. In the book Fahrenheit 451, everyone is supposed to be the same. Nobody is supposed to be smarter. There are firemen that burn any books that are found. There is a fireman named Guy Montag who questions these rules. He rebels and joins a group of people that feel the same way. The lack of communication and interaction has caused people to become insensitive, uncaring and unkind to each other.

People are more interested in using technology than in learning and interacting. They prefer to watch their wall TVs and listen to their seashells than learning new things and talking to their friends. Mildred likes to spend most of her time watching her wall-to-wall TV. It is evident here when she says, "It's really fun. It'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed." (Bradbury 20) Another example is when Mildred would rather listen to her seashells than talk to her husband. Montag wonders if she even listens to him in this passage: "He reached over and pulled the tiny musical insect out of her ear... He felt he was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono-color walls, speaking, but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier." (Bradbury 46) Also, Montag gets frustrated when Mildred is distracted by her seashells. He compares it to the use of the telephone. He says to Mildred, "Wasn't there an old joke about the wife who talked so much on the telephone that her desperate husband ran out to the nearest store and telephoned her to ask what was for dinner?" (Bradbury 42) In this book, people are so focused on technology that they don't have time to learn and interact. Because they ar...

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...izes how people don't care about him. "He looked down the boulevard... a car full of children, all ages, god knew, from 12 to 16, out whistling, yelling, hurrahing, had seen a man, a very extraordinary sight, a man strolling, a rarity, and simply said, let's get him." (Bradbury 128) These examples show how people in the book have lost their humanity.

Thus, what we have learned is that the people in this book have lost their desire to interact with one another. They spend all of their time listening to their seashells and watching their wall-to-wall TVs. Additionally, without books, they have not grown intellectually. In fact, they have very little important things to talk about. Finally, without interaction and knowledge, people have become uncaring and hurtful.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2013.