In Howsam’s text, she portrays the i-Generation as willing to work with primary texts to draw their own conclusions. I do not agree with her premise because it only portrays a portion of the generation.
Americans during my grandparent’s generation faced a climate of global instability and fear of internal collapse experienced by other nations. After witnessing the collapse of governments and how anarchy bred tyrannies in countries such as Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, Americans did not want to lose the freedoms and glory they had. Changes in government came about due to unrest in the populace. Americans wanted to avoid unrest out of fear of becoming a fascist or socialist nation. Fears of the unknown provided a need for stability and played a part in the susceptibility of Americans to the witch hunts during McCarthy’s campaign against American Communists. Americans in my grandparent’s generation would not want to interpret a text differently than the majority and risk being branded as a traitor. Conformity was mislabeled as harmony and “standard editions” of texts were seen as sig...
Few books exemplify the consequences of misconceptions more than Farenheit 451. The book speaks of a world in which in citizens think they are living in a utopia, when in fact their world is constantly devoloving into a place where no human could ever flourish. This delusion along with the misconception that books are thing to be feared is the precise reason that the general populace is so easily controlled. The reason behind the propaganda campaign against books is so the people do not realize that their lives are unsatisfying and dull. In other words, this, misconception propagated by the governing force, fuels the illusion of a perfect world. The myth that the world...
In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Montag exhibits conflict between character and society, when he yearns to keep books despite society's rules. Mildred finds Montag's books hidden and runs to do something about it but Montag stops her and says, “we can't burn these, I want to look at them, at least look at them once” (Bradbury 66). Montag is having conflict not only with society but himself, as he struggles to accept the censorship. Likewise, in Vonnegut's “Harrison Bergeron” characters struggle to be unique in a society where uniformity is favoured. For example, even a melodious voice is unfavoured proven as the television announcer, “began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive” (Vonnegut 3). Sameness is valued in Vonnegut’s society, even sounding diverse is unacceptable. When homogeneity is preferred over uniqueness, humanity is lost. As in Fahrenheit 451 this character is resisting the conformity that society is forcing upon them. Thus, the conflict of text-to-society relates to both Fahrenheit 451 and “Harrison
In Fahrenheit 451, they speak of how all kinds of literature is banned. Although the government allows the citizens to watch television because they are able to control and monitor what is being put in front of people. The authorities ruling banned books in order to gain more knowledge than their citizens. Like Stalin the government, that Montag lives under, censors what they do not want others to know about. In The Crucible, the town of Salem, allowed its people to read but with a twist, being only the Bible was allowed. Going against what the Bible teaches, you are seen as one that is not with
Society was confronted during an era when it questioned change in itself. For example Beatty said “and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe” (Bradbury 62). This shows that persevering against society will attract others to miss lead people; however they must follow themselves and set the path that they wish to continue down. How this show that is that Montag thought differently about the suppression of books, and became aware how society saw it. In addition Mrs. Phelps Mildred’s friend said “Why don’t you just read us one of those poems from your little book” (Bradbury 98). This shows that Montag had persevered against censorship until others were in dismay, and until they were at a point where they had to use others to help them defend themselves. How this shows that is when people persevere against others and their beliefs they will be recognized and others will try to tear them down. If people persist against society it will push back.
Anthony Comstock was the most prominent American advocate of censorship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Connecticut in 1844, Comstock fought with the Union in the Civil War and upon release became an influential member of the Young Men’s Christian Association. His personal quest to rid America of indecent and immoral literature made his name synonymous with the epithet “Comstockery” or the excessive pursuit of moralistic censorship.
During the 1950s, America was facing the competitions with Soviet Union. Cold War, fear of atomic warfare, and communism influences intensified the society’s instability. What’s more, many social problems attracted people’s focus: many writers “concerns about censorship and conformity during a period when free expression of ideas could lead to social and economic ostracization” (Telgen 138). Many essays and novels reflected this social background. However, one author, Ray Bradbury, became a preeminent writer in that era. His work not only pointed out that the people are becoming more and more apathy as well as the censorship problem, but also showed people’s fear about war.
When comparing the masterpieces of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 the astute reader is immediately able to see a minimum of two recurring themes in both of them. “Orwell had produced an imaginative treatise of totalitarianism, cutting across all ideologies, warning of the threat to humanity should any government, of whatever political complexion, assume absolute power” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 12). Meanwhile Bradbury described the horrors of a society that became a totalitarian regime through the Firemen who attempted to control the ability of thought. Both of these structures depended on limiting the thought of the citizens either through Newspeak in which the undesirable thoughts could not be expressed or by destroying access to all previous insight forcing people to rely only on their own insights while at the same time discouraging them from having any. Captain Beatty tells Montag of society’s ideal, “We must all be alike. Not everyone is born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal” (Bradbury 58). Bradbury guarded against the burning of the collective knowledge of man by pointing out the reasoning through Beatty, “With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar.... Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” (58).
The way the mind works is through a set of processes, which are steps that must be taken in order for the function it is producing to be accomplished successfully. These processes are related to those that society must be willing to take in order to achieve a desired goal, otherwise known as the ‘struggle’. Younger generations, called Generation Me, develop narcissist views that did not allow for the ‘struggle’ to be considered in their generation. The basis for this mindset is introduced by author Jean Twenge in her essay, “An Army of One: Me”, as she described the gap that occurred between Baby Boomer parents and their GenMe children. This communication was severed because GenMe was taught that their ideas are the best, and therefore not debatable. This translates to differences in opinion and results in individualism. When those individuals do not work together, as demonstrated by Deborah Tannen, author of “The Roots of Debate in Education and The Hope of Dialogue”, they tend to have a weak sense of debate because they stick up for themselves. As a diagnosis to this problem of disconnectedness, Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” decides that our society has begun to skip steps in the process of learning and in particular, the ‘struggle’ that produces the desired outcome. The disconnectedness that has developed in society has caused the loss of real learning, and the problem based on the generation gap introduced by Twenge altered the struggle that is necessary to accomplish, which Tannen believes in and where Carr determines real learning can occur.
...al texts, would sociorhetorical interpretation provide a sufficient explanation of their success if it were to be applied to those situations, and language-games that have aided in their fairly recent formation in American society?
"Nobody listens any more. . . . I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense." Utopias and Dystopias are alike in the fact they both appeal to the feuding political thinkers. Once a challenging idea is brought to attention, criticism immediately follows the claim. In Fahrenheit 451, the sense of nationalism wasn’t used because everyone acted as equals in whom no one could read books legally. Fahrenheit 451 was published as a dystopian novel, one that epitomizes the meaning of a futuristic controlling state. Ray Bradbury’s novel is one of misfortune where every citizen lived their life in censorship. It describes a society of the future that maintains a culture of an illiterate populace without books. Even though as a young boy Bradbury loved to read books he saw the world for what it was going to be. This is why Fahrenheit 451 is continually taught in schools today and will be taught for a long period time. “ Fahrenheit 451 was selected by a national endowment for the arts (NEA) for its big read! It shows a society without reading.” (3) Its literary techniques developed brilliantly organized, along with its life changing message. His dystopian novel made the pedestal of a warning; although his purpose wasn’t to predict the future, his valiant claims came close to reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury raises questions to people to wonder as to why our society will heavily depend on technology, become uneducated and resume a life of communism and one without religion. Many say that his surroundings influenced a thought of negativity which was shown in several of his novels.
Both Thoreau and Emerson argue that asserting one’s opinions is crucial to attaining a better society. Emerson decries the danger of societal conformity and challenges the reader to “speak what you think now in hard words” in order to remedy it (Emerson 367). Likewise, Thoreau speculates that if “every man make known what kind of government would command his respect” it would be “one step toward obtaining it” (Thoreau 381). With these remarkably similar statements, both transcendentalists appeal to the reader’s patriotism by using language evocative of the agitated and outraged colonial Americans who demanded the people’s voice be heard in government. Although published roughly a half century later, “Self-Reliance” and “Civil Disobedience” mirror the sentiments of famous Revolution-era leaders such as Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry.
Twenge’s article brings several issues to our attention. Doctor Twenge refers to the impacted generation as “iGen” because “members of this generation are growing up with smartphones and do not remember a time before
Postman’s main argument here is that the power of typography has the ability to control discourse. When language is controlled by print, an idea, a fact, or a claim is the result. And today we have this unrelenting demand to understand and know everything we are presented with. Print gave priority to the intellectual and rational mind, therefore encouraging serious, logical public discourse. Postman supports this claim by arguing that the Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason”, a written pamphlet that challenged the religious and political institutions of the 18th century, was coexistent with the growth of print culture. Paine scrutinized the Bible and charged its divine claims as false. He did this through careful analysis and came up with logical conclusions. In essence, typography and print created and changed people’s identities and beliefs.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was written as a social criticism of 1950s America which was effectively constructed through Guy and Mildred Montag, and Captain Beatty, representing censorship, conformity and alienation. This American classic warns against the dangers of suppressing thought of becoming a totalitarian society, conveying the dangers of censorship and government control is as relevant as today as it was first written. ‘Oppressive government, left unchecked, can do irreparable damage to society by limiting the creativity and freedom of its
Portraying the characters rejection to conformity, American literature illustrates the distinctive following of one's own standards. From what has been analyzed previously, the authors are trying to display a message of change through the characters words and actions. Many times it is apparent that the characters are in there times of most comfort when they are acting in such that makes them their own being, stepping aside from the standards of the rest of society. Writers try to express the importance of stepping outside of that comfort zone in order to grow and develop as a human being. How will one ever know who they are if they conform to be what everyone is told to be? The biggest advocate of rejecting the norms of America is Chris McCandless.