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The true meaning of freedom
The true meaning of freedom
Meaning of freedom short essay
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In every society, there are people who try and are able to escape. These people decide to do actions out of the normal customs. Most cases, individuals who escape tend to be casted as outsiders or freaks. Although, more than likley they just don't approve of the tendancies of their society. People should use certain time for these activities with the customs for a balanced lifestyle.
With too much time in one task, you tend to become different from everything usual. Citizens can escape from the common way in a diverse pattern. For example, in the story "Fahrenheit 451" Guy Montag, stole books even though in his culture, they are forbidden. Occupants can escape from the common way in a diverse pattern.
Escapes always come through people
My breath was heavy as I was sprinting from them. I could hear them on my tail. But the only this that was racing through my mind was “I have the book.”
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.
Ray Bradbury points out many thinks in this novel some obvious some not so clear. He encourages readers to think deep and keep an open mind. Ray Bradbury wrote a short story that appeared in Galaxy science fiction in 1950, which later became the novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. This novel takes place in a dystopian society where books are illegal and firemen start fires.
Imagine a world in which there are no books, and every piece of information you learn comes from a screen. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, this nightmare is a reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman who instead of putting out fires burns books. He eventually meets Clarisse who changes his outlook on life and inspires him to read books (which are outlawed). This leads to Guy being forced on the run from the government. The culture, themes, and characters in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 construct a dystopian future that is terrifying to readers.
The concept of escape plays a large role in literature. Many authors explore mental, physical, or figurative escape throughout their work. In Slaughterhouse 5, a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut explores mental and physical escape through his main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy is a soldier at war, but only because he feels entitled to do so. His father was a soldier and grandfather was too, so Billy feels obligated to uphold the tradition, even though he has no desire to be at war. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut describes Billy as weak, constantly trying to escape his circumstances, both literally and figuratively. In contrast, Achak Deng, the main character of Dave Eggers’ novel, What is the What, is a Lost Boy from Sudan, who walked for days, weeks and months, hoping to flee from South Sudan to Ethiopia. Throughout his journey, Achak utilizes outside sources to escape the hard circumstances he faces on his journey to Ethiopia. Slaughterhouse 5 and What is the What are similar in
In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, people have TVs the size of walls, the people can obtain cars that go at alarming speeds and students do not have to worry about being assigned chapters to read for homework. Technology is at an all-time high and even controversial topics have been avoided. It may seem that there are no downsides to this world, although in the following scenes the real atrocities of this masked dystopian society are revealed. The U.S. Constitution plays a large role in granting citizens rights although, in Fahrenheit 451, their version of granted rights is twisted. Different amendments that are violated throughout the novel are featured in three scenes. The first scene consists of a woman being limited expression
In Fahrenheit 451, The people of Montag's society have no quality for human interaction or any form of socialization that doesn't include their fake families. Millie, Guy Montag's wife, talks her husband's ear off about the parlor or in other words, her fake family, however she barely asks of how her husband is or if he is ok. Millie's friends, talk of their kids and they give of the idea that they could not care less about their own legacy and their futures. In this society, their technology replaces their family, emotion attachment, and their ways of human interaction.
Ray Bradbury knew that the screens isolated communities, just as they did with Mildred and Montag. This isolation is expressed by Montag in the following quote: “He reached over and pulled the tiny musical insect out of her ear. ‘Mildred. Mildred?’ ‘Yes.’ Her voice was faint. He felt he was one of those creatures electronically inserted between the slots of phono-color walls, speaking, but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier. He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him. They would not touch the glass” (Bradbury 47). In here technology is again represented as a barrier between Mildred and Montag. Bradbury refers to the device as an insect, giving it negative connotations. The communication between them is
Henry David Thoreau, a famous American author, once said that “What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” Essentially, Thoreau is saying that even though people are normal, we as a society are not and have various faults. Ray Bradbury reflects upon Thoreau’s ideas in his novel entitled Fahrenheit 451. Despite that fact that Bradbury is describing how society might look in the future, he is actually criticizing the society we live in today. In the novel, Guy Montag, the protagonist, realizes that his supposed utopian society is actually a dystopia. Montag finally realizes this when Clarisse, his young neighbor, asks him if he is happy. Although Montag believes that he is happy, it becomes clear later in the novel that he is not. Montag finds countless faults in his society. Throughout the novel, Bradbury’s goal is to warn the reader of faults in society, such as the education system and our attachment to technology.
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 the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury provides a social commentary onto the dystopia that the character, Guy Montag, experiences. In the midst of WWII, Ray Bradbury provides an accurate social commentary in the novel. This was due to the existence of Nazi Germany at the time, which was a historical authoritarian state.
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
I believe this quote, an excerpt from The Sieve and the Sand, a section of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, embodies the sole purpose of Montag’s and the other intellectuals journey. This quote is taken from the scene just before Faber, the professor, decides to help Montag and explain to him the true meaning of what him and others have been doing. Faber tells Montag that nearly all of the things (99.9%) that Montag is looking for are out there, but the only way that many people will see them is in a book. Montag has realized the importance of the knowledge he is carrying and goes to Faber to help him understand the words written on every page. This quote is extracted from a very short monologue/lecture that Faber is delivering to Montag about
In the book, Fahrenheit 451,written by Ray Bradbury, he had put in literary devices to help readers understand what is going on throughout the context of the story. The literary devices used in the book were imagery and personification. These literary devices will help shows how technology ruins personal relationships.
As we all have observed, throughout history each culture or society has unique norms that are acceptable to that group of people. Therefore, to establish and come to the acceptance of these basic norms, each society must develop its’ own strategies and techniques to encourage the fundamentals of behavior, which is clear in our modern society. Most do assume that everyone in a society will follow and respect such norms. However, some tend to deviate from the adequate norms and demonstrate deviant behavior. Nevertheless, we are inclined to ask ourselves, why do people decide to violate such important standards of living?