Fahrenheit 451 Aesthetics

Nigamananda Das (2007) introduces the concept of ‘positive aesthetics’ which suggests that while ‘[a]rt-work may be good or bad, ugly or repulsive […] nature is all beautiful in its own way’ (p. 18). Positive aesthetics posits that ‘[a]ll [of] the natural world is beautiful’ and that the natural environment ‘so far as it is untouched by man’ (Das, 2007, p. 18). These untouched environments are ‘graceful, delicate, intense, unified, and orderly rather than blase, dull, insipid, incoherent, and chaotic.’ A problem for positive aesthetics is whether all parts of nature should be held as equally beautiful. Holding that all of nature is equally beautiful has a strong motive, since to suggest otherwise may seem to compromise the position of positive

aesthetics (Das, 2007).

Only the natural world in Fahrenheit 451 allows Montag the ability to think and find himself.

Nature is presented positivity as a force of innocence and truth, while technology is destructive and dull. While in the countryside, Montag witnesses the natural world and becomes enlightened in the unspoilt environment. It is only when he is surrounded by nature he has the ability to think and feels free. When Faber speaks to Montag he tells him to look in nature and items from the past for awareness and detail:

It’s not books you need, it’s something that once were in books. […] The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself (p. 107).

Bradbury emphases nature and more simple, historical objects as positive, and a way for Montag to find what he believes is missing. This further highlights Bradbury’s use of the natural environment to show Montag’s defiance of society as a positive

step.

Lawrence Buell argues that ‘apocalypse is the single most powerful metaphor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal’ (Buell in Nayar, 2010, p.

285). Work concerning apocalyptic situations, in most cases, see little hope for the earth. The rhetoric within these texts clearly distinguishes between the good and bad: ‘technology is bad, nature is good, humans are bad, animals are good’ (Nayar, 2010, p. 248). In Fahrenheit 451 Montag retreats to the countryside and discards the technology and values of his society. By leaving the city and returning to nature, Montag avoids the atomic warfare and destruction the city faces. While in the countryside with the men he met, they have limited technology and rather value literature and knowledge, values that are at odds with the society they left. The destruction of the city, which represented the technology and mass, consumer culture highlights the dichotomy of nature and technology. While nature is a continuous cycle of construction and destruction, technology only focuses on the

former.

Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 utilises landscape and the natural environment to show Montag’s defiance from his own society’s norms. It is through his use of the landscape and retreat to nature that Bradbury highlights his own distrust and dissatisfaction with the society and culture of his own time. New Historicism and ecocriticism complement each other in the exploration the how the environment within Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates Bradbury’s own ambivalence and rejection of the 1950s American society and cultural values. Ray Bradbury’s classic, which depicts a society enslavement by the media, technology and conformity, holds messages that resonate with and confront audiences of his own time and for future generations about the impact of technology, censorship and the mass media.