Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury explores the impact of censorship and forced conformity on a society living under a totalitarian regime where books are forbidden and burned, and individuality is destroyed. It is against this totalitarian setting where characters either conform or defy the 24th century, ‘dystopian’ America’s societal attitudes, values and beliefs. Whilst some reflect the rigid rules of this society, others defy it, exposing the ‘perfect’ societal flaws where the idea of ‘being happy’ is analysed and constructed through conformity, censorship and alienation. Mildred Montag, wife of main character Guy Montag, is the epitome of conformity. She is a totalitarian system’s product; a shell of a human being, devoid of any sincere emotion …show more content…
or intellect, only following the society’s standards with blind obedience. She lives her life ‘bombarded with sensation’ completely attached to the ‘parlour walls’ and considers the characters of her various programs absorb her as her ‘family’. “My family is people. They tell me things.” This, with the ‘seashell ear thimbles’ which she wears at night, drowns out any attempt of conversation forgoing any real happiness to become alienated from reality. This theme of happiness is at the crux of this novel where the characters never question whether they are happy or not, just that they are. In fact, Mildred’s need for escape lead to her suicide attempt although she refuses to acknowledge this when questioned by Montag. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why would I do a thing like that?” She is so alienated from reality that she cannot even recall how she met her husband and her apathy and insensitivity is indicated through her attitude when hearing about the woman who burnt along with her books, a product of living in this conformist society. “She’s nothing to me. She shouldn’t have had books.” As a disciple of this order, she is so blindly loyal to the system and turns Montag into the authorities believing him to be betraying the censorship laws, when he hides books from the houses he destroys. Even worse, as she escapes, her only regret is for her parlour ‘family’. “Poor family, poor family, oh everything’s gone.” Thus, it can be seen through conformity and alienation, that Mildred is a product of a totalitarian world where she conforms to all the rules and regulations through technology; where the parlour becomes a substitute for real people, and conversation and thought are as alien as books and knowledge. Yet, her husband Guy Montag, questions that same society and the rules. Guy Montag is a dynamic character who, through challenging the society of which he has been its most obedient servant, transforms his world from ignorance to knowledge. At the beginning, he is a total conformist who is invested in the totalitarian system underpinning this dystopian America, and does not question the status quo. As a fireman, Montag takes great pride in his job and is responsible for upholding the strict censorship policy through destroying the books of people, their homes and lives. “It was a pleasure to burn, to see things eaten, blackened and changed” Nonetheless, he becomes very curious after meeting Clarisse McClellan, a young 17 year old neighbour when she asks him, “Are you happy?” This simple question sent him on a journey in the pursuit of happiness by questioning the society’s values. However, his misery is compounded when he discovers his lifeless and apathetic wife and soon comes to realisation the ‘emptiness’ in his life and acknowledges that he is deeply ‘unhappy’. “He felt his smile melt away, like a candle burning too long and now collapsing and blown out.” Also, Montag believes books must have something of value after watching an old lady willingly burn with them and he subconsciously desires knowledge and secreted away books to his home, thus becoming alienated from the society. He begins to resemble the anti-social outcast of this strictly controlled society, in danger of becoming an individual. An example of individualism is depicted when he blatantly flaunts the rules with his deliberate exposure of a bible in his possession. However, Montag is frustrated when he fails to process what he is reading because of the overwhelming ‘Denham’s Dentifrice’ advert, pounding from the train’s speakers. This inability to think above the ever ceasing noise makes Montag resentful of the suppression of ideas and wants to strike back, to abolish censorship through espionage during which he plans to plant books in the fire fighter’s homes. “Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen’s houses burn... across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason.” However, Montag’s conflict between Beatty leads to the change in Montag. Beatty, Montag’s superior, represents the authority behind the totalitarian regime as he is devoted to the destruction of intellectual pursuits and individual thought. He believes that people without knowledge by conforming to the rules and regulations is the answer to happiness. This is shown when he demonstrates his knowledge in his arguments against the books’ presence in society. He said “a book is a loaded gun” opening all different interpretations and ideas which ‘offends people’. “People must be happy; how much easier without books. Who wants to read about books that ‘offend’ others?” As an authoritarian of this regime, he puts Montag into becoming a fugitive to be hunted down as people with new ideas are a threat to the society’s order.
“You think you can walk on water with your book? Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, you’ll drown!” It is through this confrontation with Beatty, when he finally removes himself from the society- crossing the river, which symbolises purification as it changes him from ignorance and conformity to knowledge and individual. Hence, it can be seen through censorship and alienation, that Montag represents the individuals in this totalitarian setting as his shift in attitudes, values and beliefs by ‘crossing the river’ results in an irreconcilable break from societal expectations and proceeds to possess knowledge. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was written as a social criticism of 1950s America which was effectively constructed through Guy and Mildred Montag, and Captain Beatty, representing censorship, conformity and alienation. This American classic warns against the dangers of suppressing thought of becoming a totalitarian society, conveying the dangers of censorship and government control is as relevant as today as it was first written. ‘Oppressive government, left unchecked, can do irreparable damage to society by limiting the creativity and freedom of its
people’.
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 leads from an average beginning by introducing a new world for readers to become enveloped in, followed by the protagonist’s descent into not conforming to society’s rules, then the story spirals out of control and leaves readers speechless by the actions taken by the main character and the government of this society. This structure reinforces the author’s main point of how knowledge is a powerful entity that would force anyone to break censorship on a society.
In Fahrenheit 451, the government exercised censorship supposedly for the purpose of happiness. Through technology and media, the government was able to eliminate individuality by manipulating the mind of the people into believing the propaganda of what happiness is. The people’s ignorance made them obediently abide that they failed to realize how far technology and the media have taken control of their minds. The free thought of characters such as Montag and Clarisse collided with that of Captain Beatty, who strongly believe in and enforce the censorship, and the firemen, whose role was to burn illegal books; these clashes were Bradbury’s way
In a society where everyone is forced to be exactly the same, whether it be intelligence or behavior wise, Guy Montag stands out. Montag is the main character of Fahrenheit 451. Like any main character, Montag is faced with many internal and external conflicts. Unlike most main characters, Montag solves his conflicts in a strange way. After doing some soul-searching, he begins to fight for a better society than the one he currently lives in by rebelling against the government in every way possible, such as storing books, killing people, and running away from the city he lived in.
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.
Years after writing this novel, Bradbury witnessed the reality of Fahrenheit 451’s futuristic society. He wrote of a real life encounter where a woman “held in one hand a small cigarette, package- sized radio, its antenna quivering. . . This was not science fiction. This was a new fact in our changing society” (Bradbury, “The Day After Tomorrow: Why Science Fiction?”). Censorship through suppression of thought or an overload of technology is increasingly present in today’s visionary world, where a person can hardly be seen without a phone in their hand or headphones attached to their ears. Furthermore, Bradbury connects the plot of Fahrenheit 451 to ethnic and moral issues of the real world proclaiming, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/ Unitarian, Irish/Italian . . . feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse” (“Coda”). Burning a book can be physical as well as metaphorical. One could physically burn a book as the Firemen do in Fahrenheit 451, censoring society from ideas and literature. In addition, one could burn a book by changing every little thing about it to suit their taste. Bradbury applies this concept to both the discrimination against and within minorities. Fahrenheit 451 continues to influence contemporary society as a repeated pattern of social decline plagues the world. Literature, however, heals this sickness by instigating careful examination of human nature and the individual
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 on 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.
Visualize a future where all books are forbidden, banned and censored in an effort to keep the human race from thinking for themselves. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 forces us to envision a futuristic lifestyle where the government forbids its people from reading or taking part on individual or independent thinking. A world where feelings are shunned, family engagement is non-existent, war is common and ignorance is truly
"Nobody listens any more. . . . I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense." Utopias and Dystopias are alike in the fact they both appeal to the feuding political thinkers. Once a challenging idea is brought to attention, criticism immediately follows the claim. In Fahrenheit 451, the sense of nationalism wasn’t used because everyone acted as equals in whom no one could read books legally. Fahrenheit 451 was published as a dystopian novel, one that epitomizes the meaning of a futuristic controlling state. Ray Bradbury’s novel is one of misfortune where every citizen lived their life in censorship. It describes a society of the future that maintains a culture of an illiterate populace without books. Even though as a young boy Bradbury loved to read books he saw the world for what it was going to be. This is why Fahrenheit 451 is continually taught in schools today and will be taught for a long period time. “ Fahrenheit 451 was selected by a national endowment for the arts (NEA) for its big read! It shows a society without reading.” (3) Its literary techniques developed brilliantly organized, along with its life changing message. His dystopian novel made the pedestal of a warning; although his purpose wasn’t to predict the future, his valiant claims came close to reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury raises questions to people to wonder as to why our society will heavily depend on technology, become uneducated and resume a life of communism and one without religion. Many say that his surroundings influenced a thought of negativity which was shown in several of his novels.
When Guy begins to talk to Clarisse, he spends some time marveling at her strange behavior and speech. But after she tells him about “’[her] mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking’” (9) as they wait for the youngest member of their family to return home at one in the morning, it becomes clear that Clarisse’s abnormality is derived from the shelter her family provides against the oppressive, thought-controlling government the rest of her society lives under. This protection allows Clarisse to grow up unstifled by government policies designed to create compliancy, but it is a luxury that also inhibits her from engaging with her peers. Mildred Montag has no such defense, and she must cope with the hopeless reality she experiences every day on her own. While Guy is home sick, his frustration with Mildred
In Fahrenheit 451 we meet Montag. He seems like an average man, but his job is a bit different. He works as a fireman for his local city Instead of fighting fires he creates them. Books are outlawed in this world. People are not allowed to read an they have to conform like everyone else. Very few people go against this government. Montag
Books and knowledge are one of the essential parts of having power.Throughout history, people have controlled the information and intelligence of the general population to gain control of them. In the novel Fahrenheit 451,government censorship causing a control in knowledge is a prevalent issue. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury conveys that censorship will lead to a much worse society expressed by everyone in society is antisocial, everyone in society is no longer thinking for themselves, and by everyone in society is very short tempered.
According to American actor, Hal Sparks, “Political and social change is always a stagger-step process. One step forward, two steps back.” In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, an uniform society driven by conformity, technology, and commercialism, is shown as a projection of what our society might become. Our society today has not yet reached that point although we are clearly set on a similar path. Issues arising with social conformity, the rapidly expanding digital world, and first amendment rights are major players in what is to come.
After experiencing such an intense connection with books, Montag expects that everyone will have the same connection. Mildred's friends' reactions prove him terribly wrong. Contrary to his expectations, they revile him and books in general. This leads him to even further question his society and everything he has been taught. He becomes cognizant that the people he knows have never experienced a true connection to another real person – only to their fake television “families”. Montag realizes that the connection he has found with books is unique in his world, and begins to see the true value of
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, the author Ray Bradbury successfully makes the reader focus on the value and the meaning of a free society. He does this by setting his characters in an oppressive society where the government seeks to control and manipulate the citizens by destroying their individuality and thus the basic essentials of what it is like to be human. (He does this) by early on raising in the mind of the main character, Montag, who´s function is to control society by burning books by having a young girl, Clarisse, confronting him with he question of wether he is really happy. From there on, Montag explores what it is to be happy and how a society, by being oppressive, can take away the opportunity for a free society.
In The United States of America, freedom is an undeniable right granted to all citizens. However, in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the idea of an American future without freedom of thought is explored in depth. The primary way that freedom of thought is restricted in the novel is through the American government’s ban on literature. The ban arose from the enticing nature of new technology and the challenging ideas and controversy that arose from books, controversy that offended minorities. Guy Montag, the central character, feels the affect of a life without freedom through his constant internal struggle on whether he is satisfied with his life of material pleasures or if he longs to formulate intellectual ideas. Unlike Montag, most