The process of enlightenment takes a lot of strength from people, physically, and mentally. It requires constant persistence, perseverance, and meditation. Two pieces of literature that explores the transition from ignorance to enlightenment are Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”. Fahrenheit 451 describes a fireman, Guy Montag’s change from being completely ignorant to being fully open-minded. “The Allegory of the Cave” illustrates a prisoner’s move from being oblivious to full broad-minded. Throughout the two pieces, Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 and the prisoner in “The Allegory of the Cave” underwent a remarkably similar process, from ignorance towards enlightenment.
Montag and the prisoner are similar
…show more content…
to each other in the beginning through their display of ignorance. In the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, Montag was an ignorant fireman whose job was to burn books. Montag, in his ignorant state, enjoyed his job. Montag took part in burning someone else’s books and house. “He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house” (Bradbury 3). Similarly, the prisoner in “The Allegory of the Cave” was also ignorant. An unknown force chained him to the ground and forced him to watch shadows of an object. Plato wrote, “In this chamber are men who have been prisoners there since they were children, […] behind and higher up, a fire is burning and […] in front of which a curtain-wall has been built […], above which they show their puppets” (Plato 2). Both the prisoner and Montag was born and nurtured in a society that composed of pure ignorance. They never thought about another side of an action, only one side that society accepts. Montag never thought about how a fire can do something else besides destroying. He only knew the side society wants him to know, that fire cripples and destroys. Similar to Montag, the prisoner never knew about who made the shadows or where the shadows came from. He only knew that there are shadows and that they are real. The next stage that showed the similarity between Montag and the prisoner is when a greater force freed them from their life of ignorance.
After a night of burning, Montag happily walked to his house, when suddenly, a charming seventeen-year old girl named Clarisse surprised him. Clarisse asked Montag a series of questions that he found difficult to answer. The questions made Montag think about his life, as a result, it represented the first stage in his quest for knowledge, the freedom from ignorance. One question Clarisse asked that was particularly important was if Montag was happy. Although Montag responded that he was, “he felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, […]. He was not happy. He was not happy” (Bradbury 12). Comparably, the prisoner also went through a similar process. An unknown power loosened the prisoner’s chains and forced him to stand up. Plato wrote, “Then think what would naturally happen to them if they were released from their bonds and cured of their delusions. Suppose one of them were let loose and suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk towards the fire” (Plato 2). These scenes depicted a person’s reaction when they were suddenly free from their earlier life. Both Montag and the prisoner became free after their encounters. Their new movements startled Montag and the prisoner. Instead of doing the usual routine, they are now thinking something new they never heard of in their entire
life. The third stage that showed the similarity between Montag and the prisoner is how they reacted when they compared their former life with the new thoughts and questions. After his conversation with Clarisse, Montag walked into his bedroom and found his wife Mildred, about to die. The hospital sent a machine with two operators to remove the cause of her suicide from her body, sleeping pills. Montag was angry with the operators and asked them why the hospital did not send a real doctor; they responded that the doctor was not necessary for this type of operation. The entire act shocked Montag. “He got up and […] opened the windows wide […]. Was it only an hour ago, Clarisse McClellan in the street, […] and his foot kicking the little crystal bottle? Only an hour, but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colorless form” (Bradbury 16-17). Comparatively, the prisoner underwent a similar experience when an unknown power forced him to walk towards the fire. The light of the fire unknowingly dazzled the prisoner’s eye. Plato wrote, “All these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly of the objects of which he used to see the shadows” (Plato 2). Both the scenes showed that any person that began to think and forced to look at the small details of their past life would be horrified. In his former life, Montag would not be as shocked as he was when he saw a machine going inside his wife. The descriptive imagery Bradbury portrayed showed how advanced technology and unintelligent people can affect someone’s life and their loved ones. Similarly, the light of the fire dazzled the prisoner. Even the light of the fire was too bright for someone who spent his entire life in the dark. The fire in Plato’s work symbolized the truth. The prisoner being dazzled by even the light of the fire shows that someone who was given a small aspect of the real world would be shocked and confused.
Thomas Gray, a poet from the eighteenth century, coined the phrase “Ignorance is bliss” in his poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742), and three centuries later, this quote is commonly used to convey the message that sometimes, being ignorant of the truth can cause happiness, and knowledge can actually can be the source of pain or sadness. However, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this phrase is taken very literally, and knowledge is feared to the extent where books are considered illegal. Throughout The Hearth and the Salamander, Guy Montag, the main character, experiences a drastic change wherein he begins to realize that there is power in knowledge, and that this intelligence has the potential to be worth more than the so-called “bliss” that ignorance can bring.
The idea of enlightenment and the feeling of liberation seem unattainable most of the time. However, once you discover a gateway, such as literature or meditation, it becomes easier to reach your goals of becoming open-minded. Azar Nafisi’s “Selection from Reading Lolita in Tehran” describes the struggles she and her students face and how they use literature to escape from their atrocious life. Similarly, “Wisdom” by Robert Thurman explores the idea of reaching a nirvana-like state where people become aware of their surroundings and the nature of themselves. Nafisi and Thurman state that once people have attained the knowledge to reach an utopian, nirvana like state and have unmasked themselves from a pseudo-self mask put on for society, they must share their knowledge with others. Both Nafisi and Thurman propose that in order to act out selflessly and become an honest, true self, an individual needs bravery and courage to escape from their comfort zone and reach a state of compassion.
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.
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.
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.
American’s education system has been entering crisis mode for a long time. Throughout the past few years, the overwhelming question “Is college needed or worth it?” While it is an opinion, there are facts that back up each answer. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” mentions that the enlightened must help the unenlightened and further their knowledge. The problem with America today is that high school students are given the option of college and that makes for less enlightened people. While it is possible to learn in the work force or Army, college is a better option. Mary Daly wrote the article “Is It Still Worth Going to College?” which talks about the statistical value of attending. Michelle Adam wrote the article “Is College Worth It?” which mentions the struggle young people are going through to even get into college. Caroline Bird wrote the chapter “Where College Fails Us” in her book The Case Against College where she
In the novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag doesn't want to be ignorant. He wants to understand the reason why the society is unhappy and burns the books. As Montag struggles between his identity crisis of being a fireman and seeking change, he wants to be knowledgeable.
James Baldwin once said “It is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished...that he is set free, that he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.” This quote displays the abundance of courage that is needed to leave everything an individual has in order to move forward. The bravest thing he can do once he has lost his identity, is to surrender who he was and open his mind to the possibility of wo he is going to be.
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.
13 Dec. 2004. Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. Kreis, Steven.
Niles, Patricia. “The Enlightenment.” Novaonline. Niles and C.T. Evans, 7 May 2011. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. .
In the translation of the dialogue from the Allegory of the Cave, readers are introduced to ideas that help them discover information about the process of enlightenment. After readers’ read the Allegory of the Cave, the readers understand Plato’s philosophical assumptions. From the dialogue, Plato confirms the idea that humans establish their own understanding of the world based on their principle senses. Plato catalogs a significant perception of how humans are able to process new ideas of enlightenment or education.
Considering how the brain works, one does not have total control over the mind or subconscious. As individuals, our brain can be manipulated through reformation. Our mind produces thoughts and decisions that are influenced by the outside world. The subconscious is everything that we repress or want to forget.
In book seven of ‘The Republic’, Plato presents possibly one of the most prominent metaphors in Western philosophy to date titled ‘Allegory of the Cave’.