These societies were happy and merry. Everyone had everything they needed to be happy. They had lots of fun and their lives were perfect. In Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, and “Masque of the Red Death”, written by Edgar Allan Poe, both of these societies show how they are full of pleasure-seeking. The similarities in theme of pleasure-seeking as a priority are extreme and they are worthy of full discussion. It is good to make yourself happy, but it can backfire on you. The people in these stories only cared about making themselves happy but they ended up dying. These points show up in both Fahrenheit 451 and “Masque of the Red Death”. For the people in both of these stories the world revolved around themselves. In Fahrenheit 451, Mildred didn't even care for her own husband. While Montag was sick Mildred did not …show more content…
take care of him. She had no compassion or empathy for him. When Mildred left Montag after reporting him to the fire station she said, “Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything gone now” (Bradbury, 114). This quote shows that when Mildred left, she wasn’t sad because she wasn’t going to be with Montag anymore. They didn't even have a real relationship. Mildred’s family was her TV show. Her TV show was more important to her than her own husband. She was sad about not having her TV anymore. In “Masque of the Red Death”, while the world was dying from the Red Death, Prince Prospero decides to throw a party. Edgar Allan Poe states, “The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, It was a folly to grieve, or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure” (PG#). Prince Prospero wasn't trying to help others or save anybody. Instead he focuses on his needs. He wants to escape from death and the disease. He wants to have fun while everybody else is dying. These examples from both stories show that the people in their society are selfish and self-centered. They don't care about anybody else except for themselves. Even though they are selfish, they’re happy, right?
In Fahrenheit 451, Beatty tells Montag, “You understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred…. People want to be happy…. Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it?” (Bradbury, 59). Happiness is what their society lives for. Mildred claims she is happy but earlier in the story she tried to commit suicide. Their whole society claims to be happy, that's what they want to be, but everyday there are many cases of suicide. This shows that they are not happy. Prince Prospero was known for being happy. Edgar Allan Poe described, “Prince Prospero was happy, dauntless, and sagacious” (PG#). Everybody at the party was happy and having fun. They were having the time of their lives at this extravagant party but every time the ebony clock struck every hour they stopped and listened. It reminded them of the Red Death but it showed that they have lived another hour of their lives. Both of these societies wanted to be happy. They censored all the bad things in life but it ended up making their lives
worst. At the end of both stories the societies are destroyed. In Fahrenheit 451 there is a nuclear bomb that is dropped in their city, killing all the citizens. Montag said, “I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years”. (Bradbury, PG#) People around the world hated them because of their selfishness. This caused them to go into war with other countries but at the end they get annihilated. In “Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe writes, “And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall” (PG#). Everybody was trying to escape death. They were having partying and having fun while the world was dying but in the end the Red Death caught up to them. They couldn't escape death and were killed. This shows that selfishness is what destroyed them. Everybody was selfish but in the end they all died. The people only cared about themselves. Self pleasure was what made them happy but their selfishness ended up destroying their society and killing them. This is important to the world because in today’s society there are a lot of people who are selfish. Many people only care about themselves and their own pleasures. They don’t care about anyone else besides themselves. Sometimes we might be self-righteous. We don’t try to listen to others and understand what they are coming from. In life you have to be considerate of others. You can't always have what you want. You can't just go thing for yourself. You need to appreciate the things you have and be thankful for it. If you only do things for yourself, it will destroy you. To find happiness, it is not about doing things for yourself. Happiness is found when you are selfless. You’ll be happier if you help others. Even if it’s just the littlest things like opening the door for someone, helping an elderly person, or even saying thank you. Doing those littlest things will even make you feel better. Being selfish is not going to bring you happiness. Selfishness will destroy you. Be selfless because it makes you happier. Selflessness is happiness, not selfishness.
I believe that the characters Beatty and Mildred were catalysts for Montag’s awakening in Fahrenheit 451. Beatty was responsible for tempting Montag with the idea of reading books, and so he is the main reason that Montag grows a hunger of knowledge for themes and ideas of literature. Mildred is also a reason for the awakening of Montag, because she was his wife but had no emotional ties for him, so instead of having love from his wife he decided to search for love in other places resulting in a love of
In Fahrenheit 451, the residents were not happy in the society they were confined to. The government there made them believe they were happy because they had no sense of feelings and if they did they would have been killed, sent to the psychiatrist who would then prescribe them pills, and just thought of as a threat. The word “intellectual” was seen as a swear word, so from that you can see what type of society the people were living in. In general, the residents of Fahrenheit 451 were not happy at all and were the victims of media and entertainment.
The bureaucratically controlled Fahrenheit 451 society and the technologically controlled Gattaca society depict similar, as well as different, aspects of dystopian dehumanization. There are also commonalities shared by Vincent and Montag in their struggles of gaining some control of their life, and staying under the radar while persevering to fulfill a desire that goes against societal conformity, yet they also contrast each other in some aspects.
Society changes people in a positive and negative way. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; Mildred is the wife of the main character Guy Montag, and she acts in certain ways that seems odd or strange. Captain Beatty, the fireman captain, gives a speech to Montag. Beatty’s speech explains why Mildred acts the way she does, which had just started to become a mystery for Montag.
Are you really happy? Or are you sad about something? Sad about life or money, or your job? Any of these things you can be sad of. Most likely you feel discontentment a few times a day and you still call yourself happy. These are the questions that Guy Montag asks himself in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this book people are thinking they are happy with their lives. This is only because life is going so fast that they think they are but really there is things to be sad about. Montag has finally met Clarisse, the one person in his society that stops to smell the roses still. She is the one that gets him thinking about how his life really is sad and he was just moving too fast to see it. He realizes that he is sad about pretty much everything in his life and that the government tries to trick the people by listening to the parlor and the seashells. This is just to distract people from actual emotions. People are always in a hurry. They have 200 foot billboards for people driving because they are driving so fast that they need more time to see the advertisement. Now I am going to show you who are happy and not happy in the book and how our society today is also unhappy.
“Revealing the truth is like lighting a match. It can bring light or it can set your world on fire” (Sydney Rogers). In other words revealing the truth hurts and it can either solve things or it can make them much worse. This quote relates to Fahrenheit 451 because Montag was hiding a huge book stash, and once he revealed it to his wife, Mildred everything went downhill. Our relationships are complete opposites. There are many differences between Fahrenheit 451 and our society, they just have a different way of seeing life.
You take advantage of your life every day. Have you ever wondered why? You never really think about how much independence you have and how some of us treat books like they’re useless. What you don’t realize is that both of those things are the reason that we live in such a free society. If we didn’t have books and independence, we would treat death and many other important things as if it were no big deal. That is the whole point of Ray Bradbury writing this book.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Fahrenheit 451 share two main characters that are seemingly lost in the unknown. Both Chief Bromden and Guy Montag are protagonist in the respective novels. These two characters both have a false sense of reality; however, this is the only reality they know. Bromden and Montag have little sense of what the world they live in has to offer. However things start to change for both of these men when they start to receive guidance from their counterparts, Randle McMurphy and Clarisse McClellan. Both of these characters become the catalyst for the freedom and liberation that Bromden and Montag come to find.
Upon investigating the dehumanized complexion of the societies in these two novels, it is seen that both authors effectively use this setting to convey their warnings. These societies lack positive emotions, particularly love. In Fahrenheit 451, a teenager named Clarisse McClellan rubs a dandelion under Montag’s chin. Since the dandelion doesn’t rub off, she claims Montag isn’t in love. He originally denies this, for he has a wife name Mildred. However, he later realizes “That awful flower the other day, the dandelion! It had summed up everything” (Bradbury 41). Montag has reached the conclusion that he doesn’t love Mildred, his own wife! This epitomizes the dehumanized society of Fahrenheit 451, a society in which there are no strong emotions. Emotions are part of what characterizes humanity. Without them, people would merely be machines. Montag has not experienced love or happiness, and because of this he has not truly ...
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).
In dystopian literature, the future of society and humanity is presented in a negative standpoint. Utopian works frequently illustrate a future in which the everyday lives of human beings is often improved by technology to advance civilization, while dystopian works offer an opposite outlook. Examples of dystopian characteristics include an oppressive government, a protagonist, and character nature. Although the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and the film V for Vendetta directed by James McTeigue display different perspectives of a dystopian society, both share similar dystopian characteristics, which include a government who asserts power over citizens, a protagonist who questions society, and characters who are isolated from the natural world.
The Hunger Games and Fahrenheit 451 are both great examples of dystopian fiction. A dystopia is a fictional world that takes place in the future that is supposed to be perceived as a perfect society, but it’s actually the opposite. Other things that a dystopian society might display are citizens both living in a dehumanized state and feeling like they’re constantly watched by a higher power. Dystopias are places where society is backwards or unfair, and they are usually are controlled by the government, technology, or a particular religion. The Hunger Games and Fahrenheit 451 are both in the dystopian fiction genre because the societies within them show the traits of a dystopia. Both of them also have characters that go against the flow of the normal world.
When one first examines these two stories, they see a dehumanized society which is one way Orwell and Bradbury present their warnings about society. Both authors show this through lack of positive emotions, particularly love. In Fahrenheit 451, a teenager named Clarisse McClellan rubs a dandelion under Montag’s chin. Since the dandelion doesn’t rub off, she says Montag isn’t in love. He originally denies this, for he has a wife name Mildred, but later he realizes “That awful flower the other day, the dandelion! It had summed up everything” (Bradbury 41). Montag has reached the conclusion that he doesn’t love Mildred, his own wife! This epitomizes the dehumanized society of Fahrenheit 451, a society in which there are no strong emotions. Emotions are part of what defines being human. W...
Happiness plays an important and necessary role in the lives of people around the world. In America, happiness has been engrained in our national consciousness since Thomas Jefferson penned these famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson). Since then, Americans have been engaged in that act: pursuing happiness. The problem however, as Ray Bradbury demonstrates in his novel Fahrenheit 451, is that those things which make us happy initially may eventually lead to our downfall. By examining Guy Montag, the protagonist in Fahrenheit 451, and the world he lives in we can gain valuable insights to direct us in our own pursuit of happiness. From Montag and other characters we will learn how physical, emotional, and spiritual happiness can drastically affect our lives. We must ask ourselves what our lives, words, and actions are worth. We should hope that our words are not meaningless, “as wind in dried grass” (Eliot).
Fahrenheit 451, written in 1953, still advocates for a traditional monogamous relationship for the protagonist. Much unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, which was written in 1985 – a time in which the feminist movement was at large – and wanted a chance to break away from traditional relationships. Initially, Montag is happily under the impression that his relationship with Mildred is acceptable; however this is called into question after her suicide attempt. Montag slowly breaks away from conformity as he realises that their relationship is hardly one at all, that they are unable to connect with each other. Even when he tries to bond with her, asking her about how they met, her Mildred’s response is impersonal and unsympathetic. This is reinforced when she informs him of the death of his friend, Clarisse telling him “she’s gone for good. I think she’s dead” in a nonchalant manner, disregarding her husband’s feelings. His relationship with Clarisse, however, defies what is expected. Upon their first meeting, Montag asks her “But what do you talk about?” showing his shock at the thought of a relationship like that. The society in which they live supports the idea of a lack of communication, as it is easier to conform if the populace cannot connect with one another, thus isolating them; in concordance Aleš Kozel notes that “The emptiness of their bond can be supported