How Can We Control Our Destiny In Fahrenheit 451

“I can control my destiny but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one way street. I believe that we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed.” (Paulo Coelho). Choice is when you can decide the things that are going to happen in your life. It is something everyone should have. In The Giver by Lois Lowry and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, choice or no choice is very important and none of the people had much choice about their destiny and what their life would be like. In The Giver, a twelve year old sets out to change his society where everything is controlled and you have to do things a certain way or else you will be released. In Fahrenheit 451 a destroyer of books sets out to change what people think about them. Everyone is a conformist because they simply have no other choice. “Do you ever read the books you burn?” Clarisse asked Montag this and he obviously said no in ridicule because of the big role conformity plays. In the

following paragraphs I will try to show how choice is a very important thing that lets us decide things that are going to happen in our lives. In these two dystopian novels, that is all taken away.
“Well, if everything is the same, then there are not any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things! A blue tunic? Or a red one?”, said Jonas from The Giver. In The Giver, everything is controlled and people have everything chosen for them. They get assigned their own jobs, where to live, and do not and cannot make any choices for themselves. If they do, it is the wrong choice, because it is not conforming and does not follow what the community has set up for them. Then, they are promptly released, which is the same as being killed. When the old get released, then there is a “celebration” which is another word for funeral I assume like release is for death. Jonas gets chosen to be the Receiver of Memory and gets to know what life was like when people could make their own choices. The Giver told him, “ We don’t dare let people make their own choices” and that was because of the consequences that could happen. There are really good things, like celebrations and bad things like the pain and war that was taken away. He learns that overall, life was better with choices and sets out to change how the community is structured by traveling to “Elsewhere” with the child Gabriel who would soon be released.
In Fahrenheit 451, books are not allowed and that is made clear from the beginning.

If anyone is found with the books, first the firemen burn all the books, and then they burn the house and kill the people who have them. Everyone also chooses to act conformist because they have no other choice if they want to live. The main character is Guy Montag, a fireman, who meets a girl named Clarisse who reads the illegal books, lives in the past, and ultimately changes Montag’s thoughts about the world he lives in. At first, Montag knows that his choice is going to get him in trouble eventually (Clarisse was “accidentally” killed in a car crash), but he still chooses to read the books. Very soon, he is caught up in having to burn his own house, kill his captain Beatty, and run for his life. After Faber, a professor who loves books, helps him escape, he finds a band of people who love books and they set off to change what people think about

books.
These two books are the same in some ways but they are also very different. Even though it is not mentioned much, books are not allowed in The Giver as well as Fahrenheit 451. The main difference is that in they have freedom of choice but really cannot use it much because they will get killed by the firemen if they use to much. Fahrenheit 451 also tries to build a perfect society like The Giver, but it fails just as badly as the community in The Giver. The main characters set out to change the worlds they live in so that the people can have choices and more freedom for once it their lives. All of these things are what makes these two books worth reading and I think that they are two of the best books that I have read.
I have learned several things from these two books. One, it is that important choices should be valued and that people are always looking for more control. That is probably how dystopias are formed by limiting people’s choices and freedom just because the authorities want more and more power. The societies in these two books are actually plausible because people wanting more power and control can easily happen and that did happen in these two books leaving out the freedom of choice. Choice can determine what you think about the world and is in lots of things in our lives.