Similarities Between Fahrenheit 451 And A Brave New World

Lesser of Two Evils

In both Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a society is portrayed that the common citizen views as perfect. They are both, however, far from that. In an attempt to create a utopian society, they each created their own destructive dystopian society. Both are abundant in their faults, but living in the society of Fahrenheit 451 is the more favorable selection of the two. The World State of a Brave New World relies on drugs to limit the emotions of reality, which is unnatural. In Montag’s world, the institutions of families is allowed, unlike in A Brave New World, which is important to survive everyday life. The use of drugs is also not as widespread as it is in A Brave New World, which is

healthier and safer for the community as a whole. Lastly, avoiding the strict limitations of society is easier for citizens in the Fahrenheit 451 versus The World State. When accosted with the mandatory choice of living in one society, I chose the society featured in Fahrenheit 451 mainly because of the copious faults of A Brave New World.
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness” -Jonathan Safran Foer (goodreads.com) This popular quote highlights one of the major faults of The World State. Life is filled with a false happiness and genuine happiness has most likely never been experienced in this society. In order to create this false sense of happiness, soma is used. "You do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma" (Huxley 72). In life, emotions are inevitable. Sometimes, having emotions can seem like the worst thing in the world because you feel as though your heart might actually break or you might cry so much you physically cannot produce anymore water from your eyes. These instances, however, make the positives so much better. Imagine never knowing genuine happiness. That feeling when you’re in a crop of sunflowers on a bright, sunny day and your senses fill with the smell of them, or you see a puppy and they run up to you so you can pet them, or that feeling of electricity when you touch someone you love. In this society, you cannot feel that. You can’t feel much of anything. Their source of happiness is through a bottle. To them, it feels like the best thing in the world because they don’t know what else could be out there. The only other option for them is to live on the Savage Reservation where there are “about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds. absolute savages. our inspectors occasionally visit. otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world. still preserve their repulsive habits and customs. marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families. No conditioning. Monstrous superstitions. Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship. extinct languages, such as Zuñi and Spanish and Athapascan. pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals. infectious diseases. priests. venomous lizards .” (Huxley 113). In Fahrenheit 451, emotions are suppressed as well, but it is no where near how severe as it is in A Brave New World. “Of course I'm happy. What does she think? I'm not? he asked the quiet rooms” (Bradbury 8). Although this suggests that he feels sadness, it shows that this society has the capability of feeling something. Some days, I wish i could live as they do in the World State and not worry about feeling emotions when I don’t want to, but knowing that my happiness would be derived from sex without any real connection and some pills makes the idea less than ideal.
In both A Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, drug use is widespread. In the World State, however, they are used much more often. Soma, the drug used by all of citizens is quite similar to ecstasy in our world. Ecstasy is a drug that can have lifelong effects after just one use and has a variety of short term effects such as confusion, nausea or blurred vision. It has been labeled as “the hottest thing in the continuing search for happiness through chemistry” (Drugfreeworld.org). In A Brave New World soma takes the user on a “holiday” in which their mind recreates a beautiful scene and allows them to escape reality. Nearly everyone in the society is dependent on their soma ration and could not live without it. “The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
‘Which will finish her off in a month or two,’ the doctor confided to Bernard. ‘One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished.’” (Huxley 160-161). Drug abuse and addiction is continuously growing in our world and it introduces many issues. Many even begin to do drugs to escape reality, as they do in the World State. Witnessing what drugs can do to people first hand and the extent they would go to have it, having drugs issued by the government and being accessible whenever it is desired is a scary thought. In Fahrenheit 451, drugs are used for things such as sleeping. A study in 2013 showed that almost 9 million adults in the U.S. alone use prescription sleeping pills (nydailynews.com). This does not account for any citizens that are under the age of 18, live outside of the United States or use over the counter brands. This data shows how much less of a risk the drugs are in Fahrenheit 451 than in A Brave New World. The tool used in Fahrenheit 451 as a substitute for the excess amount of drugs are wall screens. Although these do show a sense of distraction from reality, I would much rather escape through a technological advancement than damaging my body with an addictive drug.
“Those who marry are more satisfied than those who remain single,” claims a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (dailysignal.com).

The belief by the World State’s leaders is that having family ties to others is the cause of pain and hurt. In order to avoid this risk, they abolished the institution of families. Children are created in test tubes in The Centre and raised by workers who deal with thousands of children a year. Marriage is unknown to the citizens and being connected to someone for a lengthy amount of time is extremely rare. The idea at first glance seems amazing. No hurt from lost connections, “relationships” with no-strings attached. Death is simply a part of life and doesn’t typically result in sadness because you never had a bond with someone strong enough to miss them too deeply. Looking back on my short life of merely 16 years, that would take away so many instances of grief. I could be free and not have to miss out on experiences because “my mom said no”. As you begin to process this, however, it’s not as good of an idea as it seems. Yes, maybe you have more freedom and aren’t tied down to specific people, but the lack of those connections would cause you to miss out on one of the greatest things our world has to offer;love. “The Savage stood for a moment in frozen silence, then fell on his knees beside the bed and, covering his face with his hands, sobbed uncontrollably” (Huxley 210). John was in distress following the death of his

mother, and no one from the society knew how to react. It was very rare for anyone to come visit someone in the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying because no two people cared about each other enough. Having family around to support and love you unconditionally is a beautiful gift and never having the opportunity of that simply to avoid being hurt does not seem worth it to me. Although the characters in Fahrenheit 451 are often disconnected from the world around them, they still have a sense of caring and love for others. “I remember. Montag clung to the Earth. I remember. Chicago. Chicago a long time ago. Millie and I. That’s where we met! I remember now. Chicago. A long time ago” (Bradbury 153). Although their love was wavering through Montag’s rebellion, it was always there somewhere. Yes, pain typically finds its way through family connections, but it is worth it. The bonds formed through a family, whether parents, siblings or significant others, are like no other. The risk is worth the reward.
Both societies have outrageous rules and regulations that we find hard to fathom.

The World State doesn’t allow families and is organized based on a pre-determined system of social standings. The society featured in Fahrenheit 451 has firemen that begin fires to ruin books and robot dogs that act as policemen. Each society also comes with a few people that sought to break the rules that the society has. In Fahrenheit 451 this is much easier to do compared to the world of A Brave New World. Books have been banished from the society in Fahrenheit 451 for a long span of time, but the fire department continues to get calls nearly every day about a different house that has been caught hiding them. The fire department closes in on these homes and claims the illegal property, but it begs the question of how many other houses there still are that have books hidden somewhere. “He stood looking up at the ventilator grill in the hall and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grill” (Bradbury 8). In the World State, with something as simple as writing questionable poetry, a penalty almost always follows. Along with it being easier to bend the rules in Fahrenheit 451, the enforcement of the rules is more strict in A Brave New World. When news hit homes about Montag’s runaway and the chase after him, the broadcaster ensured that they would find him. They began searching for him but they were too late. As the hunt ensued, they chose the first person that they could find

and labeled him the man they were looking for. On the screen, a man turned a corner. The Mechanical Hound rushed forward into the viewer, suddenly. The helicopter light shot down a dozen brilliant pillars that built a cage all about the man. A voice cried, "There's Montag ! The search is done!" (Bradbury 142).The society’s leaders care more about looking the part than being it. They convinced the citizens that they had solved the problem, which allowed Montag to go free. In A Brave New World, it wasn’t quite that easy. When John created an uprise in the vestibule with the soma, forces came in armed with vaporized soma and a powerful liquid anaesthetic to calm the crowd and immediately detained the leaders of the rebellion. Following this instance, they were sent to islands designed to keep the rebels off the main land. In Montag’s society, it was easier for him to be successful than it was for John to be in the World State.
Both of the dystopian societies featured in Fahrenheit 451 and A Brave New World consist of harsh rules and “glorious advancements” that are scary to think about. Fahrenheit 451 bans books and relies on wall screens with interactive programs for entertainment. A Brave New World is built on a government rationing out drugs and relies on independence to avoid feeling pain. In our world, complaints persist about all of the ways our life could be better, but we really don’t know what would happen if our wish came true. This idea of being careful what you wish for is a lesson that could easily be taught through these novels, similar to how it was in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life by Frank Capra. He believes that life would be better if he was never born, as many would see the societies of A Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451 better compared to the world they currently live in. After experiencing how life is in those conditions, however, we’re not doing too bad.