We as humans tend to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We look for knowledge about everybody and everything that surrounds us from our day-to-day life. Sadly though, we must accept that in the grand scheme of life we (as a society) tend to put pleasure above our quest for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge tends to take time and energy, two things we call invaluable, and it also shows us things that might depress us. Contrastingly, ignorance takes no time and energy. Also, (as the common saying goes) ignorance is bliss. It keeps ugly truths away from us. But that is no reason to forsake knowledge for ignorance. In the early 1900’s, two books were published that would eventually be referred to the pinnacle of classical literature. The Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451 both stand out as stunning literary works. But their success is not the only thing they share. Though they are very dissimilar in setting as well as genre, the two books have the same theme. The theme is the universal message the book is trying to inform the readers about. Fitzgerald and Bradbury both convey the theme of the pursuit of knowledge versus the pleasure of ignorance in The Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451.
In The Great Gatsby, the theme is portrayed by symbolism. The book is about young Nick Carraway, a World War One veteran who has come to New York to learn about the bonds business. He rents a house in West Egg, Long Island where he first hears about his eccentric neighbour, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a fellow veteran who lives in a luxurious mansion to the right of Carraway. Gatsby regularly throws massive parties to which (it seems) all of New York and later Carraway is invited. “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the w...
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...ociety and Montag.
As Enrico Fermi has rightly said, “It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.” F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury have both created outstanding literary works which explore the human concept of knowledge. The Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451 use symbolism in the form of lavish parties and fire to represent the ongoing battle between knowledge and ignorance. The theme creates complications and conflict in both books. No matter how hard society and our minds try to forsake our quest for knowledge for the pleasure of ignorance, knowledge always triumphs. It must, if we as a society want to move on and continue to kindle new ideas.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book that takes place in the future. In a society that has been modernized to a lack of knowledge, there is one key factor that plays a role in ,not only the book, but to the reason these people are so oblivious to life. The reason is simply that their knowledge, and all information of history and reality was cut off at the source.
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...
Knowledge can be the key to success and can lead people to happier life. However, there are some instances that you can not gain any more knowledge because of how it would change your whole life. The drive of wanting more and more knowledge is best portrayed through two well -known books. In Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, and in Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon, both the creature and Charlie are ostracized by society because they are different from everyone else but this distinction gave way for distinct fallouts because of their quest for knowledge beyond their reach to achieve happiness.
To start, the novel Fahrenheit 451 describes the fictional futuristic world in which our main protagonist Guy Montag resides. Montag is a fireman, but not your typical fireman. In fact, firemen we see in our society are the ones, who risk their lives trying to extinguish fires; however, in the novel firemen are not such individuals, what our society think of firemen is unheard of by the citizens of this futuristic American country. Instead firemen burn books. They erase knowledge. They obliterate the books of thinkers, dreamers, and storytellers. They destroy books that often describe the deepest thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Great works such as Shakespeare and Plato, for example, are illegal and firemen work to eradicate them. In the society where Guy Montag lives, knowledge is erased and replaced with ignorance. This society also resembles our world, a world where ignorance is promoted, and should not be replacing knowledge. This novel was written by Ray Bradbury, He wrote other novels such as the Martian chronicles, the illustrated man, Dandelion wine, and something wicked this way comes, as well as hundreds of short stories, he also wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV. In this essay three arguments will be made to prove this point. First the government use firemen to get rid of books because they are afraid people will rebel, they use preventative measures like censorship to hide from the public the truth, the government promotes ignorance to make it easier for them to control their citizens. Because the government makes books illegal, they make people suppress feelings and also makes them miserable without them knowing.
Themes of hope, success, and wealth overpower The Great Gatsby, leaving the reader with a new way to look at the roaring twenties, showing that not everything was good in this era. F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the characters in this book to live and recreate past memories and relationships. This was evident with Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, Tom and Daisy’s struggling marriage, and Gatsby expecting so much of Daisy and wanting her to be the person she once was. The theme of this novel is to acknowledge the past, but do not recreate and live in the past because then you will not be living in the present, taking advantage of new opportunities.
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
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 on 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.
Pretend that you are class president. One day, you and your best friend since kindergarten have a huge fight, so as revenge, he releases one of your deepest, darkest secrets out into the world. The secret passes on all around and soon the whole school knows. Now it is too late to try and fix this because dark secrets are hard to forget. Ultimately, this causes all your peers to look at you in a different and bad way resulting in your reputation being ruined. You probably won’t be voted for class president ever again. This situation proves that “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” is not always true and can do the exact opposite and cause destruction. William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies shows that ignorance can become a vicious monster and destroy. This can also be seen in many other novels, such as Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 and in everyday life. Golding and Bradbury also provide characters that show knowledge, at times, is a good thing.
“When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.” This quote by Russel Baker perfectly exemplifies the meaning of cars in the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Careless driving is a common symbol throughout the book representing the aloofness of the wealthy characters and their inability to establish control in their lives. The characters in this story are constantly “driving”, trying to convince the world that wealth is all that it’s cracked up to be. Cars are, in this situation, both the figurative and literal driving force of life. When the characters climb into the wrong seat of the car, they are surely headed for trouble By comparing those born into money and power and those that had to work for their status, Fitzgerald shows us the carelessness and the inability to establish control in life that comes along with predetermined wealth.
Another theme of “The Great Gatsby” is the idea of new and old money and how that affects who society thinks you should be with. Society in all of these texts has a great influence on why couples or lovers find it so hard to express and show or maintain their love.... ... middle of paper ... ... Fitzgerald has shown this with the differences between Gatsby and Tom. Tom is all about representing old money and inheriting his fortune alongside the old dynamics of American society, while Gatsby is representing the new money and the new change in society.
Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath In the novels 'The Great Gatsby' by Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, the authors present similar ideas, but use different methods to portray them. Similarities in themes can be made between the two texts; these include the pursuit of the American Dream and the use and misuse of wealth. Other themes are also central to each novel, the strength in unity and the influence of female characters. The presentation of these similar themes is different, by the use of characters, setting, society, plot, and style and techniques employed by the author.
Thomas Gray, a poet from the eighteenth century, coined the phrase “Ignorance is bliss” in his poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742), and three centuries later, this quote is commonly used to convey the message that sometimes, being ignorant of the truth can cause happiness, and knowledge can actually can be the source of pain or sadness. However, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this phrase is taken very literally, and knowledge is feared to the extent where books are considered illegal. Throughout The Hearth and the Salamander, Guy Montag, the main character, experiences a drastic change wherein he begins to realize that there is power in knowledge, and that this intelligence has the potential to be worth more than the so-called “bliss” that ignorance can bring.
Fahrenheit 451 is a best-selling American novel written by Ray Bradbury. The novel is about firemen Guy Montag and his journey on discovering the importance of knowledge in an ignorant society. There are many important themes present throughout the novel. One of the most distinct and reoccurring themes is ignorance vs knowledge. Bradbury subtly reveals the advantage and disadvantages of knowledge and ignorance by the contrasting characters Montag and his wife Mildred. Montag symbolizes knowledge while Mildred on the other hand symbolizes ignorance.
Our knowledge is a key to our success and happiness in our life to give us personal satisfaction. Knowledge is power but not always. Sometimes our self-awareness and growth as an individual gives us negative thoughts that make us want to go back to undo it. Everyone wants to unlearn a part in our life that brought us pain and problems. Good or bad experiences brought by true wisdom can be used for our self-acceptance, self-fulfillment and these experiences would make us stronger as we walk to the road of our so called “life”, but Douglas’s and my experience about knowledge confirmed his belief that “Knowledge is a curse”. Both of us felt frustrated and sad from learning knowledge.
By assuring a steady flow of new ideas in our society, there have been many advances in the social, cultural, scientific, and technological field. New medicines and vaccines are constantly and rapidly being discovered. Although these changes may seem beneficial, Fahrenheit 451 provides a counterexample. The four screen TV's in that time hampers the thought process so people only have fun but do not think.