How Is Fahrenheit 451 Relevant Today

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Technology has proven to influence our lives more than ever, whether it be socially, or politically. In the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, the protagonistic fireman, lives in a society where books were interdicted and it is the job for firemen to burn any that are found. It was supposedly set in a futuristic time period, yet remained ambiguous so that it could be applicable to any society/year. To that end, Fahrenheit 451 is easily applicable to our society today. The novel’s representation of ignorance, lawlessness, and forceful maturity heavily relates to the current situation in our world.
The novel’s representation of ignorance in society is seen in a smaller scale in our community. In the novel, the general public has been …show more content…

Montag’s first encounter with Clarisse begins with how she is “afraid of children her own age”, how she is afraid of her dying friends and that they “don’t like [her] because [she’s] afraid”, wrapping up by stating that her grandfather swore times were different in his days (Bradbury 30). James Alan Fox and Jack Levin’s article titled How we’re aging our children begins with a story of a young child in a criminal court, being charged as an adult, after giving examples of bizarre and contradicting laws in several different states. In Montag’s society, the children are not a priority, and therefore they are forced to mature quickly, such as with Mrs. Bowles, whose children hate her for not doing what in today’s government is law-abiding - properly taking care of one’s children. The article also explains how “a broadening of acceptable behavior by age came with the social revolution of the 1960s, when youthful Baby Boomers were dominant in numbers as well as cultural influence.”. This large age grouping of a generation made younger children forcibly act older and mature, due to the “broadening of acceptable behavior by age”. Clarisse knew she could act mature/social with her ‘friends’, yet knew that in past terms (hence her grandfather) that was wrong, and therefore she said she is social in her own way, social by her own age, something Montag, who is older than her, would not understand since his social standard is

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