Zyrille Moiket Miss Hessami English 9 Honors 8 March 2024 The Value of Reading The world, as familiar as it is today, has grown towards full reliance on mindless consumption through advanced technology and media. Owing to the significant overuse and dependence on technology, in what way do books aid in the prevention of a potential breakdown in society? Fahrenheit 451, published by Ray Bradbury, foreshadows a society in favor of abandoning books, where the practice of burning literature is normalized. The narrative follows the protagonist, Guy Montag, a narrow-minded fireman who never saw past his life of limited perspective. As a tool of the government’s censorship, Montag’s life takes a turn when he develops an interest in books. With his …show more content…
In hopes of gaining further insight into books, Montag seeks Faber, a former English professor who, with his experience, mentions the significance of depth within books, stating, “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. Comfortable people want only waxed moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless” (Bradbury 79). To argue the benefit of books while in a society that neglects reading, Faber states that books contain “pores” that reflect the good and bad of humanity. In their society, people prioritize sugar-coated representations that spread inaccurate ideas, thus forming a dull society constructed on false expectations. Books provide that sense of honesty, without them, people are easily unable to learn from their flaws. In a similar sense, Kurt Vonnegut’s letter I am very real discusses the authenticity of literature and its ability to represent real-life stories, arguing that books, no matter their origin and content, should not be destroyed to spread an individual’s ideas. In his letter to the board, Vonnegut insists that any piece of literature should be burned while explaining, “It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life” (Vonnegut paragraph 5). In response to the Drake School Board claiming that his novels present vulgar topics, …show more content…
After attempting to read their first book, Montag’s wife Mildred argues that reading is unnecessary due to her heavy reliance on television. As a victim of the government’s censorship of books, Mildred defends herself, claiming, “Now,’ said Mildred, ‘my ‘family’ is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh! And the colors!” (Bradbury 69). Unlike Montag, Mildred was unwilling to seek knowledge through reading since she was heavily preoccupied with the consumption of television. She grew so accustomed to the media to the point where she refers to characters on television as her own family. Because of overconsumption, people such as Mildred are unable to recognize their faults when neglecting reading. Mildred is emotionally incapable of creating relationships with others since she prefers the idealistic characters on television to provide that sense of belonging. In addition to overconsumption, “The Great Imagination Heist” written by novelist Reynolds Price discusses the corruption of intelligence after modern-day media toward American youth while bringing awareness of their effects on children’s imagination. With his experience in the educational field, Price states, “Ask the same of students now, and you're likely to get a story that amounts to an airless synopsis of a made-for-TV movie--a stereotypical situation of
...ildred sounds like dread which would be fitting since she must be depressed as she attempted suicide in the beginning of the book.
When one fears what one does not understand, he often becomes defensive, avoiding it at all costs. This is the problem facing Guy Montag; his society absolutely deplores challenge. Anything that can be perceived as offensive is banished. In their eyes, books are cursed objects which make people think. Without literature, the public’s thought is suppressed, and they live mindless lives. In the book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Beatty is the captain of the firemen. As a fireman, Beatty acts as the controlling arm for this suppression. He is the one harshly guiding the public towards apathy by burning their books. However, when seen as just a man, Beatty is not important. He is one fireman against millions of books. He is important because of what he represents to Montag, which is: the censorship of information, an impetus to learn, and what
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.
There is a quote by Ray Bradbury that goes “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” (Bradbury). In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury books are considered illegal and should not be preserved. In our world fireman are known to put out fires, but in the book fireman are known to start the fires because of books. Technology is put above books, and the main character Guy Montag starts to realize he does not like the world he lives in, and there needs to be a change. Bradbury conveys many messages throughout the book. He somehow warns us about our future. He shows that technology is taking over our lives, and censorship is limiting our freedom. Bradbury's message of society can destroy itself
Chuck Palahniuk once said “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” When Clarisse asked Montag if he was happy, he thought, and thought about it, until finally, he found out he really wasn’t happy. Guy Montag risked his family, his career, and his life, just to hold banished readings within his home. He went against society to do what he thought was right, even if that meant punishment or death. Montag was a hero because he tried to bring back freedom and independent thought, show off author’s greatest works, and even though he rebelled, and killed a man, he did it with good intentions to help the rest of society.
Imagine a society where owning books is illegal, and the penalty for their possession—to watch them combust into ashes. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, illustrates just such a society. Bradbury wrote his science fiction in 1951 depicting a society of modern age with technology abundant in this day and age—even though such technology was unheard of in his day. Electronics such as headphones, wall-sized television sets, and automatic doors were all a significant part of Bradbury’s description of humanity. Human life styles were also predicted; the book described incredibly fast transportation, people spending countless hours watching television and listening to music, and the minimal interaction people had with one another. Comparing those traits with today’s world, many similarities emerge. Due to handheld devices, communication has transitioned to texting instead of face-to-face conversations. As customary of countless dystopian novels, Fahrenheit 451 conveys numerous correlations between society today and the fictional society within the book.
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.
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.
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
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.
When Beatty explains to Montag why books are being burned, he describes the method used when teaching students: “Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information...And they’ll be happy” (Bradbury 58). Later, on the train, an advertisement blares, “Denham’s Dentifrice” while Montag struggles to read “the shape of the individual letters” (Bradbury 75). Montag’s society is convinced that education means mindlessly memorizing facts. However, a large amount of information and facts is not a proper substitute for deep, critical thought. When information is just given and not analyzed, it prevents questioning why facts are true and inhibits the development of basic thinking skills, such as when Montag struggles to understand the book he is reading. Additionally, with so much information and entertainment circulated in Montag’s society, significant ideas that promote questioning and changing life cannot be developed. Without thoughts that allow people to question their ways and change themselves, people believe they are perfect, cannot realize their faults, and are unable to change the way they are. When Montag consults Faber for some insight on books, Faber states that books have been abandoned because “they show the pores in the face of life” and, because of this, their society is “living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam” (Bradbury 79). Instead of taking the time to think and develop thoughts, the citizens of Montag’s city take the easy way in life, by avoiding any deep thought and personal opinion altogether. It is much easier for the citizens to enjoy mindless entertainment than to think about the issues in the world and their solutions. However, this can create problems within
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,written by Ray Bradbury, he had put in literary devices to help readers understand what is going on throughout the context of the story. The literary devices used in the book were imagery and personification. These literary devices will help shows how technology ruins personal relationships.