Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Shortage of Books

”I’ve always said poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness; all that mush!” exclaimed Mrs. Bowles to Montag in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 (103). Mrs. Bowles thinks written words can make an individual really gloomy and disconsolate. Because the goal of this society is to always be satisfied, and to stay satisfied people watch TV, made up stories, which never makes them think or wonder, that is why Mrs. Bowles is convinced that poems are nasty. How does banning of books affect a whole community? Does the human civilization really differ without them? According to Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury assembles a civilization that is affected in three ways from having a lack of books: more brutality is among people, preternatural relationships cultivate, and intelligent capabilities decrease.

First, cognitive ability degenerated because of the banning of books. Visiting Faber, he said to Montag “That was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester and found only one student to sign up for Drama from Aeschylus to O’Neill” (91). Faber told Montag a memory of how books were like a beautiful statue of ice, melting in the sun. He later realized that books had no meaning to people because people stopped thinking. If the lack of books has caused people to stop thinking, then people act on impulse, rather than taking the time to consider the effect of what they are doing. Therefore, the decrease of knowledge obviously caused ignorance which in turn leads to the unawareness of ones self being taken advantage of or enslaved. In greater meaning if an individual deprives a society of individual rights or slowly outlaws educational sources (such as books in this case) and do not let people make their own choices for themselves, then they begin to lose interest in things they enjoy and "fall into the crowd" becoming (though unaware) toys of the leaders of that society, who lead that crowd of people like a flock of lambs, and thus controlling everyone.

In addition to unawareness, abnormal relationships develop in the society because without books one couple may struggle in communication. After Beatty’s visit Mildred concluded Montag’s question “My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors!”(75). Mildred feels her family is just people as if she thought people were just objects roaming around the earth.