Happiness and contentment are important to both societies, but they are addressed in different ways. Both groups emphasize the importance of happiness, but the people in Fahrenheit 451 are mindless. Clarisse says, “I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly… If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur? That's a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days” (Bradbury 6). The people in Fahrenheit 451 go through life so quickly and only focus on speed. Since they focus so much on speed, people become empty and discontent because they never pay attention to their surroundings or take time to truly …show more content…
appreciate what they have. All activities are thoughtless, and people never think or wonder about anything. Eventually, everyone becomes empty and dissatisfied, which is due to how people are raised and conditioned. Clarisse says that a typical school day consists of, “An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history of painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher” (Bradbury 27). Society has gone so far to satisfy everyone that everything becomes the same, and after eradicating anything controversial, the only options left are bland and tasteless. While these activities are not unpleasant, they are menial and fail to engage people. Subjects requiring thought are looked down upon, and people are trained to be athletes instead of artists and intellectuals. The people of Fahrenheit 451 restrict thought in an attempt to stop controversy, but due to this lack of ambition, people become empty and dissatisfied. Conversely, present society encourages exploration and less societal influence.
Idealistically, anyone can become anything they want to be, being free to express themselves. In Fahrenheit 451, everyone is expected to be happy, so they all pretend to be. After talking to Clarisse, Montag finally realizes, “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (Bradbury 9). Nobody is willing to admit their dissatisfaction, so everyone has a facade to hide it. In reality, people are discontent with their lives and void of true happiness or emotion, and society does nothing to change it, believing that the current system maintains the well-being of the citizens. People in the modern-day world wear masks as well, but the difference is that others will notice the disquieting and try their best to resolve the issue rather that turning a blind eye. Fulfillment is encouraged in the real world, whereas it is expected and falsely assumed in Fahrenheit
451.
In Fahrenheit 451, the residents were not happy in the society they were confined to. The government there made them believe they were happy because they had no sense of feelings and if they did they would have been killed, sent to the psychiatrist who would then prescribe them pills, and just thought of as a threat. The word “intellectual” was seen as a swear word, so from that you can see what type of society the people were living in. In general, the residents of Fahrenheit 451 were not happy at all and were the victims of media and entertainment.
In Fahrenheit 451, the government exercised censorship supposedly for the purpose of happiness. Through technology and media, the government was able to eliminate individuality by manipulating the mind of the people into believing the propaganda of what happiness is. The people’s ignorance made them obediently abide that they failed to realize how far technology and the media have taken control of their minds. The free thought of characters such as Montag and Clarisse collided with that of Captain Beatty, who strongly believe in and enforce the censorship, and the firemen, whose role was to burn illegal books; these clashes were Bradbury’s way
The novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury correlates with the 2002 film "Minority Report" because of the similarities between characters, setting and imagery, and thematic detail.
Imagine living in a world where everything everyone is the same. How would you feel if you were not able to know important matters? Being distracted with technology in order to not feel fear or getting upset. Just like in this society, the real world, where people have their faces glued to their screen. Also the children in this generation, they are mostly using video games, tablets, and phones instead of going outside and being creative with one another. Well in Fahrenheit 451 their society was just like that, dull and conformity all around. But yet the people believed they were “happy” the way things were, just watching TV, not thinking outside the box.
Are you really happy? Or are you sad about something? Sad about life or money, or your job? Any of these things you can be sad of. Most likely you feel discontentment a few times a day and you still call yourself happy. These are the questions that Guy Montag asks himself in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this book people are thinking they are happy with their lives. This is only because life is going so fast that they think they are but really there is things to be sad about. Montag has finally met Clarisse, the one person in his society that stops to smell the roses still. She is the one that gets him thinking about how his life really is sad and he was just moving too fast to see it. He realizes that he is sad about pretty much everything in his life and that the government tries to trick the people by listening to the parlor and the seashells. This is just to distract people from actual emotions. People are always in a hurry. They have 200 foot billboards for people driving because they are driving so fast that they need more time to see the advertisement. Now I am going to show you who are happy and not happy in the book and how our society today is also unhappy.
“Remember when we had to actually do things back in 2015, when people barely had technology and everyday life was so difficult and different? When people read and thought and had passions, dreams, loves, and happiness?” This is what the people of the book Fahrenheit 451 were thinking, well that is if they thought at all or even remembered what life used to be like before society was changed.
“Revealing the truth is like lighting a match. It can bring light or it can set your world on fire” (Sydney Rogers). In other words revealing the truth hurts and it can either solve things or it can make them much worse. This quote relates to Fahrenheit 451 because Montag was hiding a huge book stash, and once he revealed it to his wife, Mildred everything went downhill. Our relationships are complete opposites. There are many differences between Fahrenheit 451 and our society, they just have a different way of seeing life.
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.
Upon investigating the dehumanized complexion of the societies in these two novels, it is seen that both authors effectively use this setting to convey their warnings. These societies lack positive emotions, particularly love. In Fahrenheit 451, a teenager named Clarisse McClellan rubs a dandelion under Montag’s chin. Since the dandelion doesn’t rub off, she claims Montag isn’t in love. He originally denies this, for he has a wife name Mildred. However, he later realizes “That awful flower the other day, the dandelion! It had summed up everything” (Bradbury 41). Montag has reached the conclusion that he doesn’t love Mildred, his own wife! This epitomizes the dehumanized society of Fahrenheit 451, a society in which there are no strong emotions. Emotions are part of what characterizes humanity. Without them, people would merely be machines. Montag has not experienced love or happiness, and because of this he has not truly ...
In Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s society is based on a dystopian idea. In his society he is married to Mildred, they both don’t remember where they met because the loss of connection. Later on in the book, Mildred overdose on medicine because she thinks her life is meaningless. Then Montag realizes that his society is a dystopia. Bradbury says, “There are billions of us and that’s too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood.” (14). Bradburys uses this to describe how the society is filled with unknown strangers that are dehumanized. The people in the society are dehumanized by depriving the human qualities, personality, or spirit. Montag said: “Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God, the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!” (94). When Montag calls Mildred’s friends “monsters”; they didn’t care what was around them even if there was a war going on, they kept talking about their children and husbands.
In Fahrenheit 451 there are quite a few different values. The first values we are introduced to are Guy Montag's, who values, ironically, are the only ones who change throughout the book. At the beginning we see that he loves his job and is content with his life. "It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed... Later, going to sleep, he would feel the firey smile still gripped by his face muscles. It never went away that smile, it never ever went away as long as he remembered." (Bradbury 1) But later on in the book we see that his values have been changed. Largely by Clarisse, the woman who burned herself with her books, Faber, and his own reading of books. His values, by the end of the book, are more about giving society what has been taken from them, for so long: or the recipe for happiness, as Faber calls it. Quality, leisure, and the ability to act on the first two. (Bradbury )
The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.
Fahrenheit 451’s Relevance to Today 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 of 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. Patai explains that Bradbury saw that people would soon be controlled by the television and saw it as the creators chance to “replace lived experience” (Patai 2).
Ray Bradbury displays the notion of self censorship throughout the book. He accomplished this by using examples such as books and false happiness. He uses these concepts to help the reader understand that all the little problems are a result of self censorship. Overall the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury suggests that the main theme of the story is self censorship. Ray Bradbury's concept of self censorship in very relevant in today’s society. People often ignore the bad things in life, hoping they will find happiness in ignorance. They censor themselves from what could potentially ruin the fake happiness they have constructed. While Bradbury uses self censorship in an extreme manner, his ideas are still relevant to today’s
It’s no doubt that the plots of Fahrenheit 451 show Ray Bradbury’s worry about the society’s progression as well as his irritation about censorship.Throughout the novel, characterizations and symbolisms illustrate that most people such as Mildred, her friends, and Beatty all lose his or her conscience and abilities as a human. Fortunately, there still exists some people such as Montag and Faber observed the crisis in the society, and these people contributed effort to rebuild culture and civilization.Reflect to today’s society, people are still facing social problems such as lack of communication and technologies replace culture. These phenomenons should catch attentions and be solved.