Fahrenheit 451 Knowledge Essay

The Need for Knowledge

Although it can be inconvenient to obtain, knowledge is very important. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, most people have very little knowledge. Everyone lives content lives, but they are devoid of meaningful relationships or accomplishments. Bradbury suggests that without knowledge, a society cannot be progressive.

The general public is ignorant because everything in their lives is quick and convenient but lacking depth of quality, providing them with nothing to stimulate their brain or get them passionate about. Fire Chief Beatty tells Guy Montag, “The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil

thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca” (Bradbury 57). Beatty is explaining that everything must be made bland so that no one will be offended by it. The problem with this is that when people are not fired up about something, that means they do not really care about it and therefore will not gain knowledge on that topic. Due to this chronic oversimplification of media, “the mind drinks less and less” (Bradbury 57). In Montag’s society, nothing has depth to it anymore, so everyone is suffering from a lack of knowledge.
In addition to lacking knowledge, the characters in Fahrenheit 451 lack compassion, causing them to do nothing for the good of others.

Clarisse says to Montag, “I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other...Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks” (Bradbury 30). This demonstrates the disturbing lack of concern for other people in this culture. The only lives that people value are their own, which becomes even more apparent to the reader when Mildred tells her husband, “It’s fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs” (Bradbury 64). Living a lifestyle in which one’s own entertainment is more important than the lives of others has deadly results and creates a society that is in no way progressive. Also, as Clarisse points out, the fact that no one cares about each other means that “people don’t talk about anything” (Bradbury 31). This results in no ideas being exchanged or knowledge being shared, leading to no development in their society. Due to the lack of compassion, the culture in which Montag lives does not advance in any

way.
When no one has knowledge, they will not be able to actively contribute to society, which will cause it to become stagnant.

If people do not have the capability to find who they are and what they can do to better their culture, then no progress will occur in society as a whole. As Faber wisely tells Montag, “Those who don’t build must burn” (Bradbury 89). This is especially relevant to the world in which they are living since no one has enough knowledge to build anything or make progress in any way, and so they destroy things on a daily basis. Near the end of the novel, Granger tells Montag, “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies...It doesn’t matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away” (Bradbury 156-7). This kind of lasting personal legacy that Granger believes in is the way by which an individual can contribute to progress made in their society. Bradbury conveys the idea that without knowledge, it is difficult to develop one’s own unique identity and purpose in society, which is made evident through the character of Mildred, a woman whom is remembered by her husband as not “doing anything at all” (Bradbury 156). This is due to her lack of accomplishments in life caused by her deficiency of knowledge. Without the knowledge to form their own ideas and sense of self, people cannot leave a lasting contribution to their

society.