Fahrenheit 451 Violence Essay

The novel, Fahrenheit 451, by the author Ray Bradbury shows the reader a futuristic setting in which the people have progressed to violent means as a way for the population to express itself, and his predictions have started to show in modern day society. The people in his society are sadistic and use violence as a way to please themselves, and utilize their darker motives as entertainment. Today’s society and Bradbury’s society both have violence that is morally wrong, yet both societies have no control over their citizens’ eagerness for the brutality. While modern day society has not lowered itself to the act of pleasing itself with violence yet, today’s society has begun to wander down the path towards meaningless violence.

People of both societies commit crimes on community levels as declarations of rebellion or as an attempt to gain leverage. Teenagers in Bradbury’s society commit acts of murder, vandalism, and terrorize the other citizens of the community. “…to bully people around, break window panes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing ‘chicken’ and ‘knock hubcaps’” (Bradbury 27). The youth of this society are murderers, and they have fear installed into the people who rebel against their ways. “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. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid” (Bradbury 27). They take advantage of their fear and use it as a lever to keep the opposition against their free reign of the streets of the community. People in current soci...

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...e people worldwide have started to become heated with their reactions and violence more common. The government is supposed to restore the peace, yet they imply that they have done nothing to fix the problems.

The world as a whole is a more violent place. Terror rampages around the world daily and the people do nothing but contribute. Violence rises and “violent crime rose by 3.7 percent, including a 12.5 percent spike in murder rates” (Williams 1). In Bradbury’s world the people are so self-invested that they do not realize the enormity of the problems that their society is facing. People in current times acknowledge the issues and they do nothing to stop it. Governments are becoming corrupt, police hurt people with no cause, people have started to incline towards violence on a daily basis, and Bradbury’s dystopia where violence is a pleasure is becoming a reality.