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Fahrenheit 451 character analysis essay
Analysis of individuality in fahrenheit 451
Emes of individuality vs conformity in ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451
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During the Novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury there is a strong disparity between conformity and individuality. Throughout the book characters like Beatty and Mildred show conformity , while other characters show individuality, like Clarisse and Guy Montag. Beatty and Mildred are both supporting characters in the book that show conformity. Beatty, the chief of firemen who burn books, shows conformity by enforcing society's rules, making others conform. “Luckily, queer ones the her don't happen often. We know how to nip most of them at the nub” (P.58). Like this example you can see him punishing nonconformist by burning their homes. Mildred, Montag's wife, is blinded by her conformity. Her thoughts are short, and rather shallow on all topics.
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.
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.
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.
Books were taken away to cause peace not unstability. When books are reintroduced to Montag after years of burning them he is finally able to think straight. Montag used to burn books for the good of society, but once he got The Bible he could finally see his society for what it is. In the excerpt from the novel Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury utilizes personification, similes, and repetition to convey Montag’s chaotic changing emotional state throughout the subway ride, because of the books he begins to think for himself.
You ask yourself what does all of this have to do with Fahrenheit 451. If you said that the theme is individualism then I would say that you are close but no cigar. The theme of the book is what the author Ray Bradbury says about individuality. Bradbury shows how he fells about this through the character Guy Montag. Fahrenheit 451 has many examples. One is when Guy is running away from the mechanical hounds the community all open their doors: at the count of ten now! One! Two! He felt the city rise. Three! He felt the city turn to its thousands of doors. Faster leg up, leg down! Four! The people sleep walking in their hallways. Five! He felt their hands on the door knobs! The smell of the river was cool and like solid rain. His throat burnt rust and his eyes were wept dry with running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling him the last hundred yards.
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).
He breaks the fundamental law of society by reading the books, and even more so because of the fact that he is a Fireman, one of the men meant to eradicate the written word. Mildred portrays the average, banal person who wants to comply to law by staying ignorant to what the books hold. She follows her conditioning and slowly burns the books one by one. Montag even tries to change the minds of some of his wife’s friends, to which they react with anger and tears. One even recites the saying “poetry and tears, poetry and suicide…”, which is ironic because another woman 's husband jumped off a building in the past week (Bradbury 94, 101). Montag realizes there is no quick fix to change the ways of the average person, the strict censorship and detached outlook are too intrinsic to the
Guy Montag’s wife, Mildred, is the epitome of conformity. She almost killed herself but still claimed to be happy because that was how society had told her to act. Clarisse and Mildred are complete opposites. As written in Novels for Students Vol. 1, “Clarisse is shown in contrast to Montag’s wife, who totally accepts the values of the society, even when it is harmful to her health. Clarisse does not like the social activities that most people in the society like” (Novels for Students 142). Mildred acts represents most of the members of society by conforming and supporting society’s views. Clarisse, as well as Montag, was not pleased with the way society was. They both resisted conformity by asserting their views. Montag felt especially constrained by his society and the conformity it fostered. This motivated him to resist it and find others who shared his views, such as Faber and
This created conformity and individuality between the people. Characters like Mildred Montag were flowing with the society’s norm. She was willing to close family members in order to keep her family in the parlor. These parlors would show violence and the murdering of people, everyone would watch them because that was taught to be considered normal. Beatty was responsible for spreading this sort of message around, he would go to any extent to hide the truth found in books. When this occurs in a society, conformity continues to rise. People begin to want to fit in, even if that means hiding who you are. On the other hand, characters like Clarisse enjoy the simple things in life; for instance, taking walks, and socializing with people. These sorts of activities are viewed as strange and weird to the rest of the world, making a person a social outcast. She was able to question a firefighter without having any fear and figure things out on her own. Guy Montag after meeting Clarisse, started to understand himself and create his own judgment, this brought out the individualism in him. The futuristic world in Fahrenheit 451, developed conformity by keeping away knowledge and individuals formed when they took a risk to find
In “Harrison Bergeron” laws were imposed to make all people equal: “All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.” (Vonnegut 1) These amendments make it required by law for all citizens to wear physical handicaps that level any above average traits that they have engendering their equality. This essentially means it is illegal to be unique in the world they live in also denoting that individuality is not an option. Likewise, Fahrenheit 451 exhibits a scarcity of individuality as well even though there is no mandate that requires the people of Fahrenheit to be the same as everyone else. The government does not provide the resources for people to be individual: “It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not.” (Bradbury 29-30) This means that the school system fills the youth with insignificant knowledge telling them that it is valuable when in reality it is not. This reveals the drabness of the world that they live in as well as lies the government uses to keep the populace “contented” and “equal”. In the case of Fahrenheit 451 there is no individuality due to the fact that nobody can think
The three works, Anthem by Ayn Rand, Learning to Read and Write an excerpt from Fredrick Douglass’ autobiography, and Fahrenheit 451 (F451). Equality, the main character of Anthem, lives in a futuristic tyrant society, he works on creating things and realizes he is smarter than the job they assigns him, so in turn he runs away. Douglass, a slave, details in a chapter entitled “Learning to read and write” how he faces grave opposition to his endeavor, yet eventually sets himself on a path to freedom. Montag, the main character of F451, lives in a futuristic book-burning society, decides to read the forbidden books, and escapes from the society. In the three literary pieces, one common theme surfaces, “Knowledge, the key to understanding the
"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." According to this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, what has happened in the past and future is less significant than a person's character. One should not be defined by the events they face, but by their reaction to them.
The tone is Fahrenheit 451 is in a dramatic tone, most likely left over sustenance’s from his intense science fiction days. Bradbury shows a clear knack for intensity when he starts off the book by saying,”… it was a pleasure to burn…” (1) Throughout the first chapter of Fahrenheit 451, there are many charact6ers met which helps make up the conflicts. Such as: man vs. man, man vs. self, and man vs. society. In man vs. man, Montag and Beatty have disagreements over the thought if books are important or not. In man vs. self, Montag starts to notice things around him he hasn’t before and starts to question all the things that are of value to him. Lastly, in man vs. society, Montag is stuck between having to choose the life he has now, or to explore
“ The real problem is not whether if machines think, but if men do,” are the words of a wise man named B.F. Skinner. Many depend on technology to solve their problems and not themselves. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag goes through a series of events that changes his life forever. He lives in a strict, dependent, and grayed society. There is one major law that everyone must follow or they will suffer serious consequences such as the burning of their house. You are not allowed to have any books. In this story Montag struggles to see the reality of his own society, but has to dodge obstacles to do so. With the help of forbidden objects,books, he realizes what has become of his
Fahrenheit 451, a book by Ray Bradbury, takes place in an unnamed American city during 2053. This city is full of ‘drone-like’ citizens that make the mood of this book dark and depressing. Every citizen is this way because of their full attention being given towards technological devices. The devices included within this story are television sets, ear buds, and a machine that does blood diffusions. The reason the author sets his story in this time is because he likes to set his book 100 years in the future from when he wrote them.