Technology In Fahrenheit 451

A Plausibly Imperfect World

Imagine living in a world that frowned on genuine human interactions. A world where technology is loved and considered to be family more so than one’s own family. This seems almost unimaginable, but with the ever growing presence of technology in modern day society, it just may become a reality soon enough. In Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, he describes a fictional universe, but, in addition, he may have also been describing our future world. The contents of his novel, indicate that he had a realistic view of the world and wrote his story to forewarn of what might become of us. He was insinuating that violence and wars will become routine and commonplace, but being social and partaking in real conversations

The time period in which Bradbury was writing his classic novel was the era following World War II. The Korean War concluded the year his book came out, but the preponderant Colder War still remained, thus the devastation and chaos these major wars were producing inspired him to incorporate this issue into his story. In Montag’s universe, hearing and espying jet fighters is a nearly everyday ordeal, emphasized by the quote “A bomber flight had been moving east all the time they talked, and only now did the two men [Faber and Montag] stop and listen, feeling the great jet sound tremble inside themselves” (87). This quote describes their original inattentiveness towards the jets since they were so accustomed to it, which exemplifies the fact that, like violence, it betides so regularly that it is no longer a surprise when jets fly over. This conveys how war has become so commonplace that it is scarcely of any major significance anymore, which in turn demonstrates that Bradbury was attempting to emphasize to the reader how odd it would be to barely notice such things. An additional quote that reinforces this is “Montag stood trying to make himself feel the shock of the quiet statement from the radio, but nothing would happen” (125). Following the declaration of yet another war, Montag, who was attempting to transform his perspective of the world, still could not muster any feeling for the consequential sentence,

Granted, the citizens in this novel are worse, but there is a reason for that. This issue presented to us in the form of a fictional society is just another premonitory warning from Bradbury, foretelling that interactions between humans would become less frequent whereas one-on-one time with one’s phone or TV would become orthodox. His version of this was the virtual talking walls in his story, which are first introduced when Mildred comments, “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall-TV installed” (20). These TV walls represent how little time people wish to spend with other actual people. Mildred desires to completely shut the real world out and be entirely surrounded by fictional shows and people. Observing the way technology has rapidly begun to play a huge role in everyday life, it would not be surprising if talking walls become a real marketable item by 2050. We as a people are becoming less and less social as each year passes and new technology comes