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Fahrenheit 451 to read
Fahrenheit 451 to read
Effect of isolation on society
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People isolate themselves from information in this world to protect themselves and the society as a whole, but in the case of the book they take it to the extreme. The book Fahrenheit 451 shows that individuals or society shouldn’t isolate themselves from information when it could be useful. During the duration of the book it shows that the society was blocking themselves from information and the bad emotions, loss, sadness etc. Which leads multiple people into committing suicide every night in this society. Mildred has an addiction to sleeping pills which lead this to happen. ‘”We gotta go. Just had another call on the old ear thimble. Ten blocks from here. Someone else just jumped off the cap of a pillbox. Call if you need us again….’”-(Bradbury
Imagine living in a world where everything everyone is the same. How would you feel if you were not able to know important matters? Being distracted with technology in order to not feel fear or getting upset. Just like in this society, the real world, where people have their faces glued to their screen. Also the children in this generation, they are mostly using video games, tablets, and phones instead of going outside and being creative with one another. Well in Fahrenheit 451 their society was just like that, dull and conformity all around. But yet the people believed they were “happy” the way things were, just watching TV, not thinking outside the box.
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.
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book that takes place in the future. In a society that has been modernized to a lack of knowledge, there is one key factor that plays a role in ,not only the book, but to the reason these people are so oblivious to life. The reason is simply that their knowledge, and all information of history and reality was cut off at the source.
In Federalist 10 James Madison argued that while factions are inevitable, they might have interests adverse to the rights of other citizens. Madison’s solution was the implementation of a Democratic form of government. He felt that majority rule would not eliminate factions, but it would not allow them to be as powerful as they were. With majority rule this would force all parties affiliate and all social classes from the rich white to the poor minorities to work together and for everyone’s opinion and views to be heard.
Throughout Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses his world to show what books provide that society can not offer; knowledge. Knowledge then guides people out of the ignorance and conformity that the society in Fahrenheit 451 encourages and even demands as the majority. The fear of any discomfort that knowledge might bring is the cause for the society’s actions in trying to eliminate it; however, because they never take time to look past the discomfort and see the happiness that knowledge does provide, they stay in their ignorance and experience their false happiness. Therefore, knowledge is what brings people out of ignorance and into the light where they may be able to find true happiness for themselves.
To start, the novel Fahrenheit 451 describes the fictional futuristic world in which our main protagonist Guy Montag resides. Montag is a fireman, but not your typical fireman. In fact, firemen we see in our society are the ones, who risk their lives trying to extinguish fires; however, in the novel firemen are not such individuals, what our society think of firemen is unheard of by the citizens of this futuristic American country. Instead firemen burn books. They erase knowledge. They obliterate the books of thinkers, dreamers, and storytellers. They destroy books that often describe the deepest thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Great works such as Shakespeare and Plato, for example, are illegal and firemen work to eradicate them. In the society where Guy Montag lives, knowledge is erased and replaced with ignorance. This society also resembles our world, a world where ignorance is promoted, and should not be replacing knowledge. This novel was written by Ray Bradbury, He wrote other novels such as the Martian chronicles, the illustrated man, Dandelion wine, and something wicked this way comes, as well as hundreds of short stories, he also wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV. In this essay three arguments will be made to prove this point. First the government use firemen to get rid of books because they are afraid people will rebel, they use preventative measures like censorship to hide from the public the truth, the government promotes ignorance to make it easier for them to control their citizens. Because the government makes books illegal, they make people suppress feelings and also makes them miserable without them knowing.
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.
Imagine a world of uniformity. All people look the same, act the same, and love the same things. There are no original thoughts and no opposing viewpoints. This sort of world is not far from reality. Uniformity in modern day society is caused by the banning of books. The novel "Fahrenheit 451" illustrates a future in which the banning of books has risen to the extent that no books are allowed. The novel follows the social and moral implications of an over censored society. Even though the plot may seem far-fetched, themes from this book are still relevant today. Although some people believe that banning a book is necessary to defend their religion, the negative effects caused by censorship and the redaction of individual thought are reasons why books such as "Fahrenheit 451" should not be banned.
Because the Government removed the ability to question, the people in Fahrenheit 451 have deceived themselves into believing that they are happy. Guy Montag had been harbouring books for quite a long time, but only recently made it known to his wife. She had friends over, and he took out a poem book and read from it, in front of his wife’s dumbfounded friends. “Then he began to read...Mrs. Phelps was crying. The others...watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape....She sobbed uncontrollably... "Sh, sh," said Mildred. "You're all right, Clara,... Clara, what's wrong?" "I-I,", sobbed Mrs. Phelps, "don't know, don't know, I just don't know, oh oh...””. The poem book caused Mrs. Phelps to actually think about her life for the first time ever. Government censorship prevented the people from ever being exposed to material that would make them question. For the first time, she thought about her l...
The North Korean government is known as authoritarian socialist; one-man dictatorship. North Korea could be considered a start of a dystopia. Dystopia is a community or society where people are unhappy and usually not treated fairly. This relates how Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 shows the readers how a lost of connections with people and think for themselves can lead to a corrupt and violent society known as a dystopia.
The Majority of people today believe that the society in Fahrenheit 451 is far-fetched and could never actually happen, little do they know that it is a reflection of the society we currently live in. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 books are burnt due to people's lack of interest in them and the fire is started by firemen. Social interactions is at an all time low and most time is spent in front of the television being brainwashed by advertisements. In an attempt to make us all aware of our faults, Bradbury imagines a society that is a parallel to the world we live in today by emphasizing the decline in literature, loss of ethics in advertisement, and negative effects of materialism.
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 book Fahrenheit 451 the theme is a society/world that revolves around being basically brain washed or programmed because of the lack of people not thinking for themselves concerning the loss of knowledge, and imagination from books that don't exist to them. In such stories as the Kurt Vonnegut's "You have insulted me letter" also involving censorship to better society from vulgarity and from certain aspects of life that could be seen as disruptive to day to day society which leads to censorship of language and books. Both stories deal with censorship and by that society is destructed in a certain way by the loss of knowledge from books.
“Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.” (Nelson Mandela) In the movie Elysium, directed by Neil Blomkamp, and Fahrenheit 451, written by Rad Bradbury, each protagonist’s objective is to rebel against their oppressive government. In Elysium, Max grows up as a child with the inspiration of leaving his shattered earth and making it to the higher world, known as “Elysium” with his friend Frey. This makes it easier for max to reach his goal and obtain success because he grew up with the inspiration. Unlike Fahrenheit 451, where the Protagonist Guy Montag starts out by agreeing with the Utopian society he’s in, burning books and following the government’s orders. To acquire success, a