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“The Post-Apocalyptic Library: Oral and Literate Culture in Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz” Review Rough Draft
Spencer, Susan. “The Post-Apocalyptic Library: Oral and Literate Culture in Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy, vol. 32, no. 4, 1991, pp. 331-342.
Summary In “The Post-Apocalyptic Library: Oral and Literate Culture in Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz”, Susan Spencer quotes Eric Havelock to argue that “’we would never be able to burn enough books or eliminate enough intellectuals, to be able to return to the warm room of blissful ignorance’” (332), meaning that no matter how much of an effort people may give in trying to become an illiterate society,
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She then goes on to tell us that the people in the novel “sought comfort and revenge by destroying all texts and all individuals connected with learning, escaping into a simple agrarian lifestyle very different from Bradbury’s high-tech nightmare” (336). She is describing the phenomena seen in the novel called the Age of Simplification. She claims that the people in this particular society blamed the fact that people became too literate and technologically advanced that they led to their own destruction, so they ended up destroying the very source of their own destruction. Then came the fact that Leibowitz saved some texts from destruction, but he was in turn killed. The texts on the other hand managed to be passed down because of the fact that he hid them in the fallout shelter than Francis later discovered. Spencer contrasts this from the society seen in Fahrenheit 451, in that the society seen in Fahrenheit 451 was already technologically advanced and eventually started to fall out of the idea of reading texts. The loss
Once Montag witnesses the unethical extent that the firemen would go through to destroy the existence of books, he realizes how corrupt and unjust the societal rules were. “He looked with dismay at the floor. ‘We burned an old woman with her books” (47).
...ildred sounds like dread which would be fitting since she must be depressed as she attempted suicide in the beginning of the book.
One of England’s greatest literary figures, William Shakespeare, expressed the truth about coveting knowledge by saying that “ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven” (William Shakespeare Quotes). One must assume that Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451, learned from this. Bradbury’s novel shares a similar portrayal towards coveting knowledge. In the novel the protagonist realizes that he is living in a world where knowledge is lost. People abide by rules and restrictions given to them by the government. There is nothing in this society to make people think about how valuable knowledge is, except for books. The protagonist is a fireman whose job is to seek out books and destroy the contents. The mass population believes that books are a waste of time and useless. The protagonist also believes this until a change of heart leads to a journey of identity and curiosity. Bradbury believes that this type of world will eventually turn into our own. Clearly, Ray Bradbury’s outlook for the future of man is grim because he represses intellectual endeavor, lacks critical thinking, and becomes destructive.
The story goes on to introduce the audience to a new perspective of a ‘ fireman’ in this blind, corrupted society. “ With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame … he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black” ( Bradbury ) page 3. This quote shows that these fireman do not allow anything “bad” to get in the way of society. The firemen eradicate any trace of books to avoid the cost of having people feel conflicted while reading because of the natural necessity to think while reading. While it is quite possible to understand what one is trying to get across, in the end people will not have the knowledge they need to survive in life. This society has surprisingly advanced technology that is similar to that of today’s society that has similar negative effects on humanity. “Will you turn the parlor off?” he asked. “That’s my family”. ( Bradbury ) Page 48-49. The negative effect that this has among the citizens of this society is the sad replacement of family. It isn’t far off to call the television their family because the people are as equally dull and ignorant as that of the T.V characters. The last idea that does not benefit humanity is the removal of books, this is the most crucial factor to ruining the lives of many by censoring knowledge
Imagine a world in which there are no books, and every piece of information you learn comes from a screen. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, this nightmare is a reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman who instead of putting out fires burns books. He eventually meets Clarisse who changes his outlook on life and inspires him to read books (which are outlawed). This leads to Guy being forced on the run from the government. The culture, themes, and characters in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 construct a dystopian future that is terrifying to readers.
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.
You take advantage of your life every day. Have you ever wondered why? You never really think about how much independence you have and how some of us treat books like they’re useless. What you don’t realize is that both of those things are the reason that we live in such a free society. If we didn’t have books and independence, we would treat death and many other important things as if it were no big deal. That is the whole point of Ray Bradbury writing this 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.
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.
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.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
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.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book that shows how technology is taking over society. In the book, books are burned because they are viewed as senseless. People sit around and stare blankly at their TVs all day thinking that they have so much to offer when they don’t even actually know who the person on the screen is. This is a large factor in the happiness of the society in Fahrenheit 451. ` The people in Fahrenheit 451 believe that they are perfectly content and happy.
To do this we will look back at the past, how the situation became as it did in the world of Fahrenheit 451. As Beatty explains, the changes began around the time of the industrial revolution. Life sped up. Books, once the pleasure of few, painstakingly written in ornate handwriting went into print, and books entered the main stream. As people read more and more it became a challenge to read as many books as possible, something you could boast about to your neighbours. Books became shorter, “classics cut to fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary résumé.” They were stripped down to their very basics, lacking the details that brought them alive. The masses had with their impatience driven the goodness out of the subject of their impatience. Books fell out of favour, and eventually the government banned books. In their place came the screens, filled with things that the viewer could see, making them, in the eyes of most, true. The government manipulates the masses through this immediate and believable outlet, and shorten education, making a population easy to manipulate. For the intellectuals, and others who still choose to read, the government oppresses them by disallowing books. So, this oppression comes from the people, who grew tired of books, and a