Welcome all to your first blog! For you response, we want to read fascinating yet brief analyses of the novel. There is so much to discuss in the novel, but choose one topic and stay focused. Remember to follow the Mountain Range 5 Steps for developing a thesis, then choose a literary element as a focal point. Also remember to include support; a minimum of one quotation is required. Most importantly, have fun and take a chance when creating a provocative and interesting response. Make certain to read the posts of your classmates, and also check in to the blog next Friday because Mr. Biggs and I will choose a few posts that receive Top Honors. Hope to see you all in August for our next workshop!Friday, July 20, 2012
Fahrenheit 451
Welcome all to your first blog! For you response, we want to read fascinating yet brief analyses of the novel. There is so much to discuss in the novel, but choose one topic and stay focused. Remember to follow the Mountain Range 5 Steps for developing a thesis, then choose a literary element as a focal point. Also remember to include support; a minimum of one quotation is required. Most importantly, have fun and take a chance when creating a provocative and interesting response. Make certain to read the posts of your classmates, and also check in to the blog next Friday because Mr. Biggs and I will choose a few posts that receive Top Honors. Hope to see you all in August for our next workshop!
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If illusions remain unquestioned, Ray Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451" suggests that spectacles have the power to erase and replace reality with the help of invasive media and advertising. In the world Bradbury creates and describes in his novel, the people have trouble determining need from want, and reality from illusion, due to this intrusive amount of propaganda. “TV walls”, “sea shells”, and other forms of media “chock [the people] so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information…because facts of that sort don’t change” (Bradbury 61). However, barely anyone questions the so-called facts of reality they are told, or asks for answers to the unexamined assumptions of life which remain supposed by the general public. The people are told if they have “a fourth wall-TV put in,” (Bradbury 20) or some other similar “fact”, they will be happy: meanwhile, the Emergency hospital gets “cases nine or ten a night” (Bradbury 15) of people needing rehabilitation from suicide attempts. Because the illusion of happiness is unquestioned in this society, a false pleasure powerfully dominates the ignored pain and suffering of the world. Furthermore, the people forget basic knowledge, because their government claims it is for the good. Beatty, an important fireman, claims, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it” (Bradbury 61). In saying this, Beatty demands that an illusion be portrayed to the people that the government has everything under control, even when it is lacking and inept. Over time, the government’s untrue propaganda schemes manage to overthrow the unwanted reality, creating a forged truth. By forcing products, services, and beliefs on a people, the government manages to create a fake reality of happiness and togetherness for the depressed, lonely citizens of reality. The brainwashing depicted in "Fahrenheit 451" accurately portrays what can become of a civilization when illusion expunges and substitutes for reality. When an elusive ideology is as unquestioned as that in Ray Bradbury’s society, it gains enough power to warp and manipulate reality.
~Hannah Haugenes
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, society revolves around the idea that it is not necessary for one to reflect on his or her environment around them. In this alternate reality, no one is required to think or have his or her own thoughts. The entire city is filled with a constant stream of media, which is, in turn, absorbed by the city’s inhabitants. Because the civilians spend their time watching television, listening to seashell radio in their ears, or hearing advertisements blaring everywhere they go, they know not to think, but just to listen and be happy. Their society functions because the people are taught ignorance is the key to happiness, not knowledge and books. The public believes that when one thinks and “asks why to a lot of things [they] wind up very unhappy” (Bradbury 60). When the goal of the average citizen is to simply feel happy, thoughts and other emotions get in the way. Mildred, a model citizen, feels no real emotion towards her husband, Guy. Instead, she spends her time watching their television and immersing her self in the programs. This lack of emotion becomes even more apparent when she attempts suicide, and in the end, abandons Guy, leaving the house to be burned. The firemen in the story use fire to destroy books and houses in which they are stored, and along with them, the need to think and have emotion. Books are truly the gateway to thoughts and ideas, and throughout the course of the novel, fire is used to burn them. Instead of combating emotions, the government finds it easier just to “burn [it] all, burn everything” so the people don't have to think (Bradbury 60). By using fire to destroy books and the dead, firemen are truly burning away any sadness or reason to think and be unhappy. When Guys breaks free from the idea that ignorance is the key to happiness, he realizes he is truly unhappy and craves knowledge and learning. He begins to grasp the idea that books and thinking are good things, and help society thrive and create progress. With this realization, his desire and hunger for knowledge and reading drive him to risk his live for the sake of book.
-Maggie Brown
Two types of happiness exist in this world: short-term happiness and long-term happiness. Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 illustrates that a chain of short-term “happinesses” is immensely different from permanent long-term happiness because short-term happiness can be bought, while long-term happiness must be found. To begin, one can achieve short-term happiness purely through the rush of pleasure the material items give off. For example, Mildred says “How long you figure before we save up and get…a fourth wall-TV put in…I should think you’d consider me sometimes” (Bradbury 20). Mildred says that this is what will make her happy in the long-term, however “[the third wall] was put in only two months ago…” (Bradbury 21). This quotation portrays that much of what society thinks of as long-term happiness is actually a chain of short-term “happinesses”, as Mildred is satisfied by one material item for a period of time (the third TV-wall), but she then needs another material item to keep her happy (the fourth TV wall). Conversely, one finds long-term happiness through true love of something or someone. For example, Montag would have found true long-term happiness with Clarisse, had she not died. Montag even tells Clarisse that “I feel I’ve known you so many years” (Bradbury 28). In fact, he has only known Clarisse for a matter of days. Clarisse replies “Because I like you…and I don’t want anything from you” (Bradbury 28). What Clarisse says about non-acquisitiveness is key about long-term happiness. These days, the media maintains hegemony over society, and as a corporate enterprise, it strives only for money. People always want material items the media advertises, and, these only provide chains of short-term happiness. Long-term happiness is pleasurable and priceless, as it provides permanent happiness at no cost. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury attempts to prove that a chain of short-term happiness caused by material items is utterly different from pleasurable, priceless, and permanent long-term happiness.
Many people would rather live in an illusion of happiness instead of dealing with the real world, even if their rights are slowly being taken away. In Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, the government uses the idea of illusion to its advantage, and feed the people false happiness while they slowly alter the real world, eliminating any traces of knowledge that were there before. But how can one keep an illusion going for so long? One must realize people would rather be given constant pleasure over reality any day because they want to live a struggle-free life. When Guy Montag listens in on Mildred and her friends talking, he is disgusted and shocked by “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” (Bradbury 98). He cannot believe that they think they are happy, and decides to give them a dose of the real world once was, through poetry. By the end poem Dover Beach, Montag leaves Mildred’s friends in tears. This proves that their emotions are not well developed enough because they have not tapped into reality in ages, and that Montag has broken their illusion. That goes to show that it only takes the power of an outside source to break illusion. The government realizes this, and comes to the conclusion that if they constantly give their people pleasure, they will never have the chance to break the illusion that they have created. When Montag remembers Clarise telling him about how the government took away front porches because “People talk people talked too much. And they had the time to think,” he realizes that everyone believed the government took them away because “… they didn’t look well” because the government constantly gave out pleasure and illusion in return for taking away their rights (Bradbury 63). The people did not even realize what they were giving in return for the illusion, that’s how hypnotized they were. Frankly, they did not care too much, as long as their illusion was still intact. Beatty, one of the head firemen tells Montag “Don’t give them (the people) any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any Man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can noawadays, is happier than who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making a man feel bestial and lonely” (Bradbury 61). Beatty suggests that a government needs to make people happy in times in danger, even if means making the people’s brains deflate. When a government realizes that they can make their people happy through illusion, they use it as an advantage to make themselves more powerful. This is exactly what Ray Bradbury is expressing through Fahrenheit 451, in an attempt to show us how our society is no different from the books’.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury citizen’s individualities are questioned throughout everyday life. Montag begins to question himself and the other conformists in their society. People in this future society go with the flow, similar to the philosopher Zeno, never questioning the meaning of things, or how things came to be this way. Individuality is feared. People choose to become conformists rather than individualists to avoid conflict or rejection. Most people aren’t brave enough to be an individual because they know they may be faced with mocking and or rejection from friends and family. There are many examples in the book that support this. The McClellans are an odd, unusual family, because the like to talk and listen to each other. They go hiking, stop to smell the flowers, and sometimes “just sit and think”(Bradbury 23). They talk about the meanings of things and why things are done rather than just talking about what was on their wall the night before. Being an individual is dangerous. When people who have independent thought, which Faber encouraged, start to question why things are the way they are, it will most likely cause problems, and could be the beginning of a revolution. Most people take the easy way out agreeing with what they are told from others, and through their shell radio and tvs. These people do not have any individual thoughts or beliefs because their brains are bombarded by the thoughts and opinions of others all day long through their technology. When Montag starts to question this conformist society he is mocked, and outcasted. Mildred Montags wife begins to burn Montags book collection in fear that they could go to jail, have their house burnt down, or even be killed because Montag is hiding these books. As Montag’s individuality begins to flourish conflict evolves. People get angry at Montag and want him to stop all of the nonsense. When Mildreds friends come over to watch TV Monatg shows them a book and reads them a part of it. They are shocked by this, one friend begins to cry. Mrs. Bowles explains how “poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness” (Bradbury 101) all go hand in hand. They then continue on calling Montag “nasty”(Bradbury 101). What is the real reason they call him nasty? Because he made Mrs.Phelps cry, or because he made them feel emotion and think about their lives as an individual does? Believing they are doing the right thing since books are illegal , Mildred’s friends decide they must file a report on Montag. Montag was called to the job and is forced to burn his own house down. This shows how extreme the consequences may be if you dare to fight back against beliefs and be an individual. Conforming to beliefs may be the easy way out, but could lead to the ending of human independence individuality and overall happiness. If you are brave enough to be an individual, face conflicts head on, and go against the conformists you could start a revolution that could lead to big changes in your society.
-Ashley O’Hern
Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, criticizes the concept of freedom by declaring that though citizens are seemingly free, in reality are “nannied” by a higher authority that enforce rules telling individuals what they can and cannot do in their daily lives. For example, citizens began to neglect and ultimately forget about books and other note worthy reading materials, so soon “the newspapers [and other reading materials began] dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them. And then the Government, seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about passionate lips and the fist in the stomach, circled the situation with [their] fire-eaters” (Bradbury 89). Freedom requires knowledge because with the knowledge of freedom one will know the rights they have as a citizen under the legislation; consequently without the knowledge from books, the citizens in Bradbury’s book lose the acquired knowledge that one would gain from books and lose their freedom in the process, and the inquisitive nature that a human being needs on being independent. With the lack of knowledge, one does not think deeply into their choices; for instance, the character, Mrs. Bowles explains that she “voted last election, same as everyone, and [she] laid it on the line for President Noble. [She] thinks he's one of the nicest-looking men ever to [become] president” (Bradbury 96). Their views are skewed and only will judge on appearances and names, not on their own opinions of the choices. Further through the conversation about the election, the women compared Noble with the other candidate and give details about him by saying he is “fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results” (Bradbury 97). In the final analysis, freedom is only achieved with knowledge and with the ignorance of neglecting and ultimately forgetting books leads to a higher authority “nannying” what citizens can and cannot do.
-Ceara Gagliano
Through the character of Mildred Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 that technology can isolate someone to the point that they may completely lose touch how to form a real social relationship. In the novel many of the citizens own a device called a seashell, a mini radio that fits in an ear like a hearing aid and projects a one way conversation. The seashell fragments relationships because it takes away the key element of a relationship, which is back-and- forth communication. Mildred has lost touch with how to physically communicate with another person, as demonstrated by her inability to express original thoughts. On the other hand, Clarisse explains that people used to sit together and talk. She says “My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk” (Bradbury 63). This illustrates that the definition and principles of a real social relationship have been completely altered. Most of the citizens now own these “interactive” TV walls. In the case of Mildred, she uses the TV feel part of a false TV "family". Mildred has a script which puts words in her mouth by telling her how to respond to her TV family. To Mildred this is a real “social relationship", but in reality is just her speaking into thin air. Mildred explains her false TV family to Montag by explaining how “They write the script with one part missing. It’s a new idea. The homemaker, that’s me, is the missing part” (Bradbury 20. Mildred thinks she is the key to whole family, the missing link, but all she is doing is reading someone else’s words all of which always agree with what the other character is saying so there is no room to argue. However disagreeing is just another key aspect of a real social relationship between two individuals. In Mildred’s eyes she is transformed into Helen the homemaker, but she’s actually being transformed into a mindless automaton. Mildred, like many people in this society thinks and feels like she has a real relationships, but in reality she has become isolated by the false social aspects of technology, and completely lost all sense of what a real functioning relationship is.
-Alex Kaye
Symbolism is a literary element often used in writing when authors insert objects or figures into the text to represent conceptual ideas and messages to enhance the writing. This literary devise was used by the late Ray Bradbury in his novel “Fahrenheit 451” as he depicts the image of a Phoenix in his novel. In the novel Guy Montage, the protagonist, lives in an alternate reality where knowledge is feared and false happiness is forced upon the people. The Phoenix is described mythical creature that incinerates itself and is reborn from the ashes. This mythical creature represents how people can be reborn as they learn from their prior mistakes. In the novel, after the city was destroyed it gave the citizens a chance for a fresh start. The Phoenix also signifies how society will continue in a cycle to rebuild and then again destroy itself. “And when the war’s over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we’ll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again”(Bradbury 153). The symbol of the Phoenix also represents a rebirth for Montag to begin a new life and preserve the knowledge of books for future generations.
-Daniel Zona
When a higher power promotes conformity it is essentially creating an illusion of “happiness” for their people. Living in this “illusion of happiness,” people lose sense of reality and their true identity. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, conformity is the ideology behind happiness. People don’t know the difference between having happiness and being happy; therefore, the people are unknowingly giving the higher power more control over their lives. The People live their lives being entertained constantly. Mildred wants “a fourth wall- TV put in” because it will be more “fun” and make her “happier” (Bradbury, 20). She doesn’t realize that something material, like the TV, will only quench her thirst for happiness for only a short amount of time. Montag responds, “[they] are already doing without a few things to pay for the third wall [of TV] put in only two months ago.”(Bradbury, 21) The ideology of happiness the government created, warped Mildred’s mind to generate the illusion that material items satisfy her well being, when in fact, these material items are temporarily filling a void from what is actually missing: meaning from her life. Furthermore, Beatty knows the government took advantage of people’s want for happiness. He knows “ if you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one… Let him forget there is such thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. (Bradbury, 61) Beatty explains that it’s better for the people not to be involved with how they are controlled. They are better off not to question, for if they question, they may find purpose or deeper meaning in their life like Clarisse, who was in turn, considered an outcast. When one doesn’t question they accept and follow, creating a complacent society- a society unaware of defect. In the conformed society in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, ideology of happiness is created as an illusion because no one questions. This illusion blurs the meaning from life. From Living in this “illusion of happiness,” people lose sense of reality and their true identity.
- Eliana Swartz
Ray Bradbury's character Guy Montag would be underdeveloped if it were not for his relationships with the people around him. His wife and he, for example, are constantly butting heads over their individual ideas of happiness. Guy seeks something more substantial than the TV walls his wife surrounds herself with. He is certaintly one of the few people who has not given into their mindless appeal and is reluctant to purchase a fourth one for his wife who believes if they "had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms" (Bradbury 20-21). She is trying to escape from the dullness of the ordinary life she lives, even going so far as to attempt suicide, although she does not remember it in the morning and doubts she would "do a silly thing like that" (Bradbury 19). Where Mildred is mindless and complacent to the standard ways of living, the character of Clarisse McCllelan is the opposite. She encourages Montag to think for himself and challenge the conformist world he lives in. It is her influence that drives Montag to question the roles of fireman, their murky history and the rumors surrounding it. His inquiries are directed towards Beatty, the Fire Captain. Beatty understands Montag's natural curiosity towards the forbidden reading of books. He recommends it, in fact, confident that no written material is worth the risk. Montag may mistake him as an ally, but the world they live in is not one of true friendship. Instead it is of false happiness, secrecy, and suspicion. In the end, Beatty and he turn against one another and Montag flees a fugitive. The only person he can rely on is Faber, an old man who is too afraid to rebel against the government in any way except helping Montag find safety and freedom. He is introduced late in the book, but is perhaps a suitable replacement for the disappeared Clarisse. His life is a reflection of what Montag's would have ended up like, if it weren't for his anger and unhappy marriage. Faber has receded far inside himself and his home. He was lucky enough to understand the flaws in the world, but never brave enough to try and change them. His final stand is atonement for the blind eye he had previously turned. He dies for the sake of books, knowledge, and Montag.
Montag, on his own, may have prospered in his illegal activities if it were not for the constant battle against society and the people in it.
-Isabella Mancuso
In his novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury creates a world intended to prophesize the outcome of our own world in the sense that humans will demand constant pleasure and stimulation. Our society is rapidly becoming very similar to the society in Bradbury’s world with the increase in technology and the use of intellect to satisfy our longing of constant happiness. Look around. How many people have their noses in their phones or tablets, frenziedly scrolling up and down news feeds or submerged in an addicting game? The answer is the majority of those people. People sit staring mindlessly at the T.V. or computer screens for hours upon hours. Pop culture suggests not that we become great philosophers or intellectuals, but that we buy all the new Apple products, go on vacations, and watch the newest hit series on ABC family. The media penetrates our minds, so much, in fact, that we barely have time to think for ourselves. Mildred in Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of how the media can work its way into one’s head. The reader sees her as cold, bleak and having seemingly non-existent feelings. The only time she shows emotion is when she is watching her “ family” in the parlor and portraying happiness. “My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors!” (Bradbury 73). All she cares about is gaining more happiness through material items. “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed” (Bradbury 20). Mildred is not the only culprit of a distraught society. On pages 127 through 128, a carful of children nearly kills Montag as he is crossing the highway for the purpose of pleasure and stimulation. They think it would be “fun” to run over a man innocently trying to walk across a road. “They would have killed me, thought Montag… For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me” (Bradbury 128). The demand of pleasure and stimulation corrupted the society in Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury’s prophecies are slowly becoming true in our own world today.
In the false reality of a world that Ray Bradbury cleverly crafts in his novel, Fahrenheit 451, most of the government’s people are happy being mere puppets of propaganda. Bradbury’s civilization gives us insight on what could very well be our civilization in the future if we are not careful in our progressions. Only a select few citizens have yet to lose their conscientiousness in this story; these individuals include the mysterious Clarisse McClellan, ostracized yet happy as she is. Clarisse is one of the special people in Bradbury’s world that does what humans are meant to do—observing what is naturally around them and asking questions about what they don’t understand. She greatly contrasts to other characters, such as Mildred or Stoneman and Black (firemen). The latter characters serve for the firemen force without demur. To clarify, they simply burn and burn and burn without second guessing if burning what they’re burning is the right thing to do. Captain Beatty of the Fire Department tries to sympathize with Montag’s questions by telling him that “every fireman, sooner or later, hits this” (Bradbury 53). “This” being a sudden realization of what the fireman is actually burning. It is my interpretation that Montag realized that he had actually been burning knowledge, for that is what more often than not, resides among the paper pages of book. And his job was to incinerate that recorded knowledge, Previous to this realization, he had been playing into the government’s hand; he had been a puppet, doing exactly what he was “meant” to do. Clarisse had cut her strings, and for that she had been shunned along with her entire family. As Beatty put it, “she was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious…The poor girl’s better off dead” (Bradbury 60). The McClellan’s knew the secret to true happiness that people like Beatty didn’t want leaking out. Furthermore, the “Book People” live like nomads, and yet they have found “true happiness” via observation and questioning—what humans are meant to do. Montag had a tough time answering Clarisse’s question, “Are you happy?” (Bradbury 10) because when this pivotal inquiry was shoved in his face, Montag was still a puppet of Beatty; of the government. He didn’t have a clue as to how to answer that question. If it was an ordinary citizen like Mildred, she’d say: “Well perhaps, but a fourth wall TV would be nice to get.” This moment was when Montag first started to question whether or not destroying, rather than creating, made him happy. Now that Montag has cut his strings, however, and has strayed away from the propaganda-filled government and is living and interacting among men who share his perspective on life, I am confident that Montag can now truly tell Clarisse that he IS happy.
~Jack Fioretti
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel written by Ray Bradbury that takes place in a futuristic America that is all about censorship. All of the houses are fire proof and everyone is about fast entertainment. All of these add up to firemen, who do not put out fires, but burn books instead. The protagonist of this novel is Guy Montag, a man who is intelligent, curious, and free-thiking. Three traits that are all illegal. Most people in Guy Montag's world are okay living a life of false happiness where all they did is sit in their parlors with their "family" or their TV walls. Bradbury depicts everyone wanting to be entertained right away, by writing about cars that speed over one hundred miles per hour and how people will sit in their homes surrounded by their television walls with their fake families. "I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly." (Bradbury 9) Guy Montag is different in the fact that he wants his mind to be stimulated. He cannot find this in seashell ear radios, fast cars, or TV walls. He notices that he needs this in his life when he realizes that he has been leading an empty and unfulfilling life. "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing." (Bradbury 82) He discovers that reading can provide you with this. Unfortunately, reading is illegal and his job is to burn books. While the majority of the population is leading a life of fake happiness, and the minority who reads being jailed, the government is able to change things in the real world to oppress the citizens, such as reading or gaining knowledge. The government tried to eliminate all famous books such as the bible and books on philosophy by burning them. Montag had a secret library, and gave some books to a former professor named Faber, who knows someone who can duplicate them. Montag then runs away after killing Beatty, the fire chief and discovers a society of former professors and people who enjoy reading. These people have memorized books and after an atomic bomb blows up the city, they set out to help revive a society of knowledge and reading. "We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up." (Bradbury 163-164) This quote illustrates how Montag and his new friends are going to reintroduce books and reading into their future society. In the end, the ones who read and surrounded themselves with real, genuine happiness rather than fake and artificial happiness were the ones who survived. The people who weren't afraid to be "illegal" were the ones who made it.
The controversial novel, "Fahrenheit 451", by Ray Bradbury, illustrates how government censorship and the media are able to destroy a highly advanced society. As the civilization in the novel became more and more faced paced, it abandoned the literary foundation its ancestors set for it. Soon, books became banned, the government making it law that books could not even be possessed. The media saw books as disruptive, and "filthy", so the rest of the population jumped on the bandwagon, allowing the media to unknowingly destroy all civilization. It was believed that all they held were "silly words, silly awful hurting words"(Bradbury 101) History has proven that no matter what comes to pass in life, not everybody will be happy with it, and there will always be those who fight for change. This idea is embodies in Guy Montag, a "fireman" who sees the error in society, and seeks to "fight the man". But what does Bradbury mean to prove in his novel? He is trying to say that the media must truly keep tabs on itself, in insure that our leaders will uphold the true virtues of society. In other words, if too many people rally for an unjust cause, the government will have no choice at all but to follow it, or risk full anarchy. This is what happened in "Fahrenheit 451"; books were ostracized, so the government had no options but to ban them altogether. Every decision made must be carefully reviewed and refined, otherwise ideas may become extremes. If we do not keep checks and balances upon ourselves, we may find that we have started something we had not intended on, and will have to fight the monsters we created.
Given America’s social history of crises occurring in our past, Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 illustrates American society’s future degeneration into a total totalitarian state or a barbaric period if these crises continue. Bradbury writes this book to suggest we have already taken enough blows from crises, and if this continues, how many more can we withstand before another comes along and completely knocks us out in one final blow? Bradbury fears a total degeneration of brain power and control from the “Idiot Box”, the television, will be America’s last stand. He sees that books will be no more and only the television will be left. People’s freedoms have been limited because of the ruling figures’ laws. Worse, the leading figures manipulate society’s past so that they do not know their exact past. This, in turn, gives the leaders more power than society wants them to have. This makes people think are they really free? Do they have the same freedoms as others or do they have limited rights and they just don’t know about it? America’s definition of freedom is to follow in what you think is right and not to always act on what others think is true. Conversely, their society’s definition of freedom is a ruling figure telling them what they can and can’t do. Their leader promotes an ideology of happiness. In addition, the rulers make their people believe that society can only be happy if they listen to what the rulers say. According to Beatty, “Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books…were dishwater. No wonder why [they] stopped selling. The public…let the comic books survive…and the three-dimensional sex magazines” (Bradbury 56-7). Beatty explains to Montag that it was not the leaders that got rid of books, but the people. Each minority is stereotyped by books. So, they would complain about that book and would not read it. Almost every book was criticized a minority, so society stop reading to avoid feeling bad about themselves. As the leaders watched society stop reading books, the leaders took away the books because nobody would read them. This demonstrates that if America takes another huge crisis, not necessarily the “Idiot Box”, we could turn into a society where we have limited freedom and even those freedoms can be taken away.
-Zach Carrano
Mikayla Sciscente said..
The typical society member in Ray Bardbury's Fahrenheit 451 finds comfort in their ignorance towards the world around them therefore falling victim to all of their higher power's propaganda. Everything that causes pain, conflict or any negative type of emotions is avoided at all costs by the people and even eliminated by the government. Surrounding the people is a reality which they are afraid to face because they were fed the idea that it's dangerous and chaotic and the life the government has given them is the best and only option. Brandbury portrays a society in his novel that lets the government think for them; They take what the government gives them and choose not to question or defy it. In fact, they seem to be pleased with the idea of not knowing and letting the government take care of them. Brandbury exposes society's weakness in its inability to think independently and so effortlessly conform.He also brings forward the independent minds struggling in a very dependent society. Yet, it seems that the blind sided majority is living a more positive life but the individual thinkers have to live alone in their dark little world. And so you begin to ask yourself what is the better option? Is being like everyone else comforting and a security or just a way to hide? Does being an individual make you great or does it just make you alone? And the ultimate question would simply be "'are you happy?".
People without self- knowledge often fall into a herd mentality as demonstrated by Mildred in Fahrenheit 451.
She considers TV her ‘family’ and is obsessed with it - she even wants to add more TVs to the house because they keep her entertained and don’t allow her to ‘hear’ the walls. Montag is convinced that it is also the cause for the wall in their marriage- the actual walls and why he says he would not cry for her if she died because it would be like “crying for the unknown” (Bradbury, 44). She does this because she considers it her job to be happy and she is trying to be happy by submerging herself into the lives of her TV family. She has been told that she should be happy and she does as she is told. Her seashell ear-buds tell her every night that she is happy as she escapes into the sounds of the ocean and the ‘talking’, and as Montag says, “There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred has not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time” (Bradbury, 12) She escapes into other worlds so that she can convince herself to stay in the one she is in.
When Montag tells her to read the books, she states “Books aren’t people. You read and I look around, but there isn’t anybody!” (Bradbury ,77) . She tells him she is happy and proud of it and yet when he asks her if her family loves her with their whole heart and soul, she tells him that is a silly question and asks him to kick the dog for her is he should see it. Again, trying to convince herself that she is happy and like everyone else.
Mildred is in self-denial as people often are in a herd mentality. They allow themselves to become so suppressed by others that they simply do as they are told and they are afraid to do otherwise for fear of punishment, or not being accepted by society. When Montag tries to talk to her about why he cannot go to work and how he wants to smash and kill things, she tells him, "The keys to the beetle are on the night table. I always like to drive fast when I feel that way. You get it up around ninety-five and you feel wonderful. Sometimes I drive all night and come back and you don't know it. It's fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs. Go take the beetle" (Bradbury ,64). Because she has been herded into a mob mentality, the only things she can do is release her pain to other things like dogs and beetles.
In a futuristic world of false happiness, Ray Bradbury demonstrates how well the majority of a population prefers to live under conformity, rather than risk consequences of showing their individuality, through his novel Fahrenheit 451. In an unnamed city where protagonist Guy Montag lives, his society was continuously force-fed lies day by day, until at one point, the citizens decided to stop choking and swallow. By doing so, they lost their identities to better survive and fit into a world where everyone was exactly the same. The rebellious few faded out of the grey background, hiding their colorful personalities and beliefs for a time in which they may be accepted.
Montag’s name, ‘Guy’, was outrageously average, ironic as he was a main character. That irony also existed in his career as a fireman, where he started fires instead of stopping them as we know firefighters should. In this profession, Montag’s individuality was “singed and driven back by [the] flame” (Bradbury 4) which at the same time fueled his ability to work efficiently. Until his encounter with Clarisse McClellan, a girl with a very colorful personality, Montag had no problem doing his job the way it was meant to be done, but after they met, Montag found himself searching for a purpose, his identity, and true happiness, only to realize “he hadn’t looked for a long time” (Bradbury 9). Bradbury illustrates that people forced to be the same often have no difficulties staying that way through characters such as Montag’s wife, Millie, and her friends Mrs. Montag and Mrs. Bowles, whose minds could not withstand the sophistication of other feelings and thoughts other than what they were accustomed to. Though Montag did break pattern, the majority of the citizens would have gladly continued living under harsh laws if it also meant living without worries or hardships. Individuality comes with a price in this novel and in society today, but whether the radicals triumphed or failed, we do not know. However, they had something worth protecting, and that was true happiness, existing in between the lips of every novel they remembered, and story they could tell.
Brooke Willemstyn
Throughout Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, most people in the society conform because they feel part of a group, which makes them safe and secure, but people who want to express their individuality are too afraid of being cast out or persecuted by others. The society that Ray Bradbury creates shows that people who express their individuality are sometimes punished very harshly. When Montag goes to Faber’s house, he looks “…very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid” (Bradbury 80). In this quote Faber fears Montag, who works as a fireman, because he could burn down his house for being “different”. Faber is restricted from acting as himself without being punished by the firemen. The individuals in this novel must conform of they get “Run over by a car,” as Mildred says happened to Clarisse McClellan, who chose to be independent and stand out from everyone else (Bradbury 47). Clarisse’s death makes more people afraid to express their individuality in that society, fear is the drive behind this society to conform, instead of each person trying to be themselves. People are terrified in this novel to act as him or her because the community frowns upon individuals. They are too cowardly to be independent and different. When Montag visits Faber, Faber says. “Proof of my terrible cowardice…My cowardice is of such a passion, complementing the revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow…” (Bradbury 90). This shows how scared Faber has become to be original because of the community around him. He lives in a “shadow” and must pretend to fit in or keep in harmony with the society because of his distress of what they will do to him. Beatty said to Montag, “Let’s not quibble over individuals with memoriums. Forget them, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean” (Bradbury 60). Beatty is trying to persuade Montag that being an individual is a bad thing and only harms their conventional life style, so in order to avoid destruction; they must eliminate all people who stand out and other materials that do not make the people content. Conformity leads to less conflict and Beatty promotes it because it will lead to happiness. When Montag was running away from the firemen and trying not to get captured, the Seashell told him, “Police Alert. Wanted: Fugitive in city…crimes against the State. Name: Guy Montag…” (Bradbury 124). The alert shows how quickly the community does not accept others being unique. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, he was trying to make the point that people should get over their fears of not being accepted by others and to be distinct or independent.
~Grace Breslin
Violence is a constant substitute for free thinking in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. For Guy Montag, the random and unnecessary acts of violence he was once accustomed to are now unfathomable. Basic functions such as driving an automobile, watching media, and interacting with family have been dramatically altered and replaced with violence; yet no one seems to notice. Once, while crossing a road, Montag found his life in the hands of a gang of teenagers driving at dangerous speeds. He was a mere fingertip length from being run over, and believed “for no reason at all in the world they would have killed [him]” (Bradbury 128).There is no thought or consequence for the teens. It is a diversion, the substitution of speed and death for boredom. Furthermore, these violent diversions become elevated to sadistic entertainment in the television programing of Bradbury’s world. Montag’s wife and friends surround themselves with T.V. walls displaying disturbing scenes that provide endless enjoyment. Montag watched in horror as “three white cartoon clowns chopped off each other’s limbs to the immense incoming tides of laughter” (Bradbury 94). This gruesome scene, followed by car crashes and bodies flying through the air, is just another thing to laugh about instead of processing the significance of the violence. Perhaps the ultimate statement of how violence has infested the society is reflected in the casual comments of a mother speaking of her child. When asked what having children was like, a friend of Montag’s wife responded by saying her kids would “just as soon kick as kiss [her]” and added “thank god [she] can kick back” (Bradbury 96). Violence has taken over if a mother would choose a hurtful act towards her child rather than a loving one. In Ray Bradbury’s futuristic world violence dominates compassion and free thought.
-Olivia Schoenig
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury describes a futuristic society in which people have given up the uncertainty of independent thought and become mindless followers. In the book, Bradbury hints at the ignorance in this society of the world around them. Through fragments of conversation, the reader learns that there are still problems in the world. Montag absent-mindedly mentions the fact that the rest of the world is suffering. He says "I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play?" (Bradbury, 70) In the background of the story, there is also a looming war, yet no one seems to think about it much. Bradbury implies that the majority of the people in the book have opted to stop thinking about the world around them because of the wide range of emotions it involves.
The subject of war makes people uncomfortable since it deals with difficult emotions. For example, when Mildred has some women come over to watch a TV special, the women engage in empty babble and appear happy. However, when Montag brings up the topic of their husbands at war, the women become suddenly tense. One woman, Mrs. Phelps, tells Montag, “the Army called Pete yesterday. He’ll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours they said, and everyone home. That’s what the Army said. Quick war. Pete called yesterday and they said he’d be back next week. Quick….” (Bradbury, 90-91). As she tells Montag about her husband, she seems to be convincing herself that everything will be fine. Mrs. Phelps represents the people of the population who rely on the media as a form of assurance. They seem to be afraid to feel certain strong emotions such as sadness and loss. Because society would rather live comfortable, fun-filled lives than face uncomfortable situations and emotions, they let the government dictate their lives, even when it leads to their destruction. Through his book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury poses the idea that society's downfall won't be caused by a totalitarian government, but rather by its own shallowness.
--Cassie Jain
When you see a pond, the water is normally still and peaceful. Yet when a drop of rainwater into the pond, it ripples, causing a disruptance to the peace. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the society’s authoritarian ideology is threatened by the idea of the individual; to keep the conformity, the government eliminates individualism so that there is no disruption in the social order to keep the group’s existence from being threatened. New ideology that the individuals live by can cause confusion about what’s reality, preventing them from questioning. Clarisse McClellan is the best remaining example of individualism in Montag’s society, with her questions of “why?” and not “how?”. She pays attention to the little things in life, unlike someone like Mildred, who only pays attention to the constant motion of the “parlor walls”. After Clarisse’s death, which could have been ordered by the government, Beatty explains to Montag in his lecture that “‘She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s better off dead’” (Bradbury 60). If you dig deeper into that passage, Clarisse’s death symbolizes society casting out the individual to keep their values and beliefs safe and surviving longer. Like Galileo’s theory of motion the society will continue to live that way of life, until an outside force acts upon it. With no “outside forces”, Montag’s society will not have to worry about being threatened for change. When Montag begins to fill in Clarisse’s role as the individual, his wife no longer wants him and Beatty, knowing of Montag’s transformation, tries to expose him so he can be cast out as well. While riding in the salamander, Beatty spoke before pulling up to the house, saying “‘Here we go to keep the world happy, Montag’ Beatty’s pink, phosphorescent cheeks glimmered in the high darkness, and he was smiling furiously. ‘Here we are’… ‘Something the matter, Montag?’” (Bradbury 109-110). Now that Montatg is known as a huge threat to the society, everyone wanted him gone, which is demonstrated by their death hunt for him. Again, society is trying to eliminate the individual to keep their way of life alive. When conformity becomes the majority, individualism carries a high risk of extinction by the people in the group who do not want change.
In Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 it is clearly illustrated that the citizens in this city get so caught up in the technology that surrounds them, they begin to rely on electronics to keep them happy and preoccupied as they live their lives in a false reality, thus putting all creative thoughts aside. In this futuristic society, the citizens follow the same routine every day. This is troubling because in a once peaceful and free society, people had individuality and the time to enjoy things. Now the people do not even think for themselves. Beatty explains to Montag that this word they live in “Whirls man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary time-wasting thought!” (Bradbury 55). The simple act of thinking is considered a threat to the government. As a solution, they fill the citizens’ minds with pointless facts so they do not have time to question anything. They do not feel the need to have individuality. They do not have the brains to be creative and find a way to stand up to the wrong life that they are living. Only a select few have realized that this is not the better way of life, but a degrading way of existence. These are characters Montag meets throughout his journey to find his own individuality. Clarisse tells him about the past “…people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking…people talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches” (Bradbury 63). She explains that there once was a time when people were not so caught up in technology. Faber later warns him that if he does not act now, he will be stuck in the controlled society they live in presently. The men that Montag meets on the railroad tell him of the great future they have in store, a world where people are free to live and enjoy their own lives, instead of being brainwashed by electronics. As the story goes on, Montag comes to realize that the place he had called home all these years: the life he thought was his own, the job he believed to be helping people, was not genuine at all. Technology in this society posed as such an addiction to the citizens that they were all robbed of their creativity. In a way, the government has tricked the people into believing they are living a fantastic life, when really their world is nothing close to that. Once Montag fights his way out of the restraining fog of false reality, he realizes that all sense of meaningful thoughts have been sucked out the residents in this city. Once he is free from the world of technology, he is able to have his own thoughts. He is finally welcomed into the world of creativity.
-Katherine Kennedy
When I look at the novel, Fahrenheit 451 by ray Bradbury, I see a nation and world that has given up on all things creative and beautiful. In this dystopia we see certain elements to fill in for their happiness, such as fake families, seashells, and television programs that are so completely useless that they can’t seem to remember what they watched just a few minutes ago. I see this world as hollow. Their thoughts are hollow, connected to hollow lives who often say the same things to each other. Nobody is unique; so when Clarisse Mclellan steps into the novel, she opens Montag’s eyes. Montag sees everything as dead and alive; the snaked machine pumping out Mildred’s stomach, the hounds, and even Mildred herself, but in his eyes Clarisse is alive. When we look at Mildred, we see a character that so easily can die without even noticing. This tells us a lot about her character. In this world where people are so easily entertained by their ‘parlors’, we also see how much the parlors don’t fill anyone’s anguish for something more meaningful, something more real. Even Montag’s marriage is strange, stained without love, so empty that neither of them can remember where they met, and at the end of the novel Montag isn’t even sorry about her death. “‘It’s strange, I don’t miss her, It’s strange I don’t feel much of anything,’”(Bradbury, 155). Throughout Fahrenheit 451 we see the questions that changed society in the first place: Why read about fake people? Why make ourselves unhappy by their lives? I can’t help but think: is this where we are headed? When Montag joins the men after escaping the hound, the entire city in which he lived is bombed. I believe that this is a symbol showing that even though we don’t know exactly what happens at the end of Fahrenheit 451, we can guess that the old world was destroyed, and a new world where art is largely appreciated and like a phoenix will spring up from the ashes.
In Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" people have forgotten the feeling of true happiness and the government has moved them on to forms of media such as "TV walls" and "sea shells" to bring them false happiness. The world that Guy Montag finds himself in is the aftermath of forgotten fantasies and lost dreams that were once found inside people and books. I believe that when they started burning the books, they burned people’s dreams and fantasies with them, leaving behind shells of these people, who were left to be filled with false happiness by their government. The government convinced the public that books were dangerous, and ruled them illegal, meanwhile it more seemed the government was trying to create a “perfect world” where everyone had the same knowledge and thoughts, which were drilled into people’s minds through “TV walls” and “sea shells.” Some found themselves “happy” with the life they lived, tuning themselves into seashells and enjoying time with their “parlor families” on their “TV walls.” Meanwhile emergency hospitals usually had “cases nine or ten a night” (Bradbury 15) of suicide attemptists needing treatment and rehabilitation because they found themselves wanting to escape the “false happiness” the government created for them. Guy stood as one of the few people that wanted to bring change; go back to when books once filled the world with fantasy and different thoughts and views; when people had their own opinions and minds. Beatty was a mind that the government had poisoned; he stood up to burn away the danger of books, which symbolized separate thoughts and reactions that once populated the public. In the middle, Mildred subjected herself to the media of the government, constantly listening to her “sea shells” and watching her parlor family, aspiring to get that forth “TV wall” and happiness for her will be complete, such as the government has said. In the world Ray Bradbury created in his book “Fahrenheit 451” the government has burned away the fantasy and provoking thoughts found in books, while poisoning the minds of the people through the use of the media.
In the novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, the author illustrates a futuristic world in which many emotions and actions are artificial. People in this advanced world constantly crave happiness, whether real or artificial, and will stop at nothing to achieve it. They will go as far as "[having a] fourth (TV) wall installed" in a single room (Bradbury 20). In addition, Mildred is also so far out of touch with how our world is today that she considers sitcom families as her own family. The protagonist, Guy Montag, also displays a glowing hunger for instant gratification, displayed through his occupation as a firefighter. The firefighters in "Fahrenheit 451" set fire to homes with books, rather than putting out fires like they do in our existence. Montag explained that he is a firefighter just out of pleasure; the illusion of happiness he receives after he starts a fire is what keeps him going. That condition does not only apply to Montag; the local hospital gets "nine or ten [cases] a night", usually from people whom have lost any source of instant gratification (Bradbury 15). Furthermore, the futuristic government attempts to develop a society in which social media is king. They refuse to let anyone learn the teachings of books (hence firefighters), and surround everyone with biased ideas and beliefs. By doing this, the government creates a false blanket of happiness to mask to true dreariness and depression of society. The false illusions of happiness created by the government and the media truly shape the society to be an artificial and media-centered existence.
Throughout the novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, people are shown to be obsessed with new forms of entertainment and technology. While reading, one would normally be shocked to see the addiction to "parlor walls" and car races with teenagers, but this dystopian American future seems to have already begun. More and more people today are becoming addicted watching their TV's. This is paralleled in the novel. Mildred begs Guy to buy another parlor wall. She states " It'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed"(Bradbury 20). Mildred's desire to have another parlor wall shows the same addiction that is engulfing society today. Society's addiction to television is far more than a simple need. It cause people to feel a hole in their heart when they miss the season finale of "The Bachelorette". The citizens of America in Ray Bradbury's dystopian future and in reality have one fatal connection; they both have an undying desire for new forms of entertainment. Ray Bradbury was trying to warn future generations of an impending danger caused by television and other new forms of technology.
-Timmy Niles
In the novel "Fahrenheit 451" Ray Bradbury illustrates a futuristic society that revolves around censorship and comformity. He shows how media can brainwash a city's people and make them disciples of an abundance of propaganda. Guy Montag, a fireman who instead of fighting fires burns books that are forbidden in this society, is slowly but surely fighting the pedestrian ideas of everyone else and is reflecting on the things around him and asking questions about them. Guy was most likely inspired by a young girl he meets named Clarisse McClellan. She too reflects on things in society and questions the "norm". later in the book, Clarisse is taken away from the town when she is caught with books in her home. However, when the two first meet Clarisse asks Guy "Are you happy?" (Bradbury 10). Guy says of course, but realizes throughout his experiences as a fireman and eventually his own readings that he isn't happy. He's not happy that the government and the fireman are keeping the people from questioning what they are doing and what is going on around them. Guy finds out that in order to be happy he must read books and ask questions and reflect on society so he doesn't become just another marionette puppet being controlled by the government. Furthermore, Montag fights the government by arguing with Beatty, the captain of the fire department, who tells Montag that books give people ideas and makes them think too much. When Guy finally escapes the town he meets up with other "rebels" of society who are basically people who read, and is in an environment where he feels he fits in very well. He know feels that individuality is what is encouraged instead of conformity which is exactly the opposite of the town. Ultimately, eventhough Montag went through so many hardships trying to fight the pedestrian ideas of this interesting society he eventually found that he was doing the right thing and can now confidently tell Clarisse that he is happy.
Happiness; how far will one go to achieve it? In Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, Guy Montag, the protagonist, uncovers what key element has driven his society to burn books: happiness. This discovery wasn’t simply found overnight, no, it spawned from the interaction of a few philosophical and ultimately life altering characters. Clarisse McClellan, an outcast and Montag’s new neighbor, was the first to question the principles of their society; she was the first to ask if he “[reads] any of the books [he] burns?” (Bradbury 8). She found happiness in the little things, like engulfing herself in the cinnamon scented leaves, or openly surveying the actions of those around her. Unlike the rest of humanity, it was not essential to Clarisse to own four television walls or to “fit in”. This was a rare oddity to Montag; he had not come across anyone like this thus far in his life, with the exception to one: Faber, an old English professor. The day they met was a memory often reflected upon by Guy. He knew right off the bat that there was something different about this fragile senile man. After meeting these two extraordinary people, Montag finally realized that “[he was] not happy” (Bradbury 65), he had conceived what he must do: reinvent people’s ideas of genuine happiness. He learned from Beatty, head fireman, how it wasn’t the totalitarian government who had first possessed the idea to burn books, no it was the very own civilization they are living in today. “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book,” (Bradbury 59) was Beatty’s explanation to Montag on how the people turned against anything they felt threatened by. The minorities ruled. If a certain group of people felt attacked in any way by a book, then undoubtedly, it must be burned. This is how the present day idea of happiness came to be in Montag’s town. Books didn’t make them happy; if anything, they had upset the simple, feeble minds of the town’s inhabitants. Bright screens, being addressed by the placid voices who took up their living room walls, this is what made them happy. As you can see, happiness was a huge factor in the novel “Fahrenheit 451”, it’s what started the burning of books. It is also what made one human being realize that being a third generation firefighter wasn’t meaningful anymore and that books, something that once brought people joy and pleasure needed to be reintroduced to the world. Now that the town had turned to ashes, only one thing was quintessential for rebuilding it, restoring happiness to the community, and redesigning humanity’s principles and idealism: books.
-Emme Scharmann
In a society where spectacles dominate the actual reality, propaganda and media can create confusion amongst the people who have difficulty discerning one from the other, causing them to become ignorant and overall unhappy; Ray Bradbury expresses this in his novel, Fahrenheit 451 distinctly through the character Mildred. Mildred becomes so wrapped up in the media and propaganda constantly thrown at her that she does not even see what is going on in the world around her. She is totally surrounded by spectacles which make her think that she is happy, but deep down she is not. This is proven when these machines have to be brought into her home to bring her back to life because she overdoses on the pills she regularly takes to desensitize herself and blur out all reality. Just the fact that they even have machines specifically designed to resuscitate citizens daily shows that many people are severely unhappy, and even to the point of committing suicide. In addition the fact that she has to take the pills in the first place shows that she is extremely depressed, but is living in the fake happiness the media portrays to her and the rest of the citizens. She is so concerned with her “parlor families”, and how many wall TV’s she has that even with missiles frequently flying overhead, she remains completely oblivious to the very real war happening right outside her door. The spectacles took over so prominently that the people did not even pay attention to the war because they did not realize it was actually a war, they confused it with just some action scene from a movie. There comes a point in the novel when Montag, who used to be very much like Mildred, realizes what is going on around him, “How in the hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world?” (Bradbury 73). He is noticing that the wars and the fighting have gotten much worse overtime, whereas Mildred has just become more and more oblivious to it. In the end when Montag is on the outskirts of the city, he witnesses the war take its toll and the city is blown to bits. The spectacles have taken over their world and caused the majority of the people to become confused and unhappy. All in all, a society cannot survive with this much confusion because when the line is blurred between reality and spectacle, it will end up making the people very unhappy and overall destroying the society.
~ Natalie VanderVeer
Upon reading Ray Bradbuy’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, descriptive words painted a city that was yes, full of life and matter but was not, in whole, alive. Preoccupied by technology and being spoon-fed by the government via various forms of propaganda, the general pool of the city’s population was satisfied with the waters, finding themselves comfortable under the safety and security provided by the government. Few and far between, however, individuals were drifting astray, treading in dangerous waters of opinion and creative expression. Dousing a red flag of flames upon those few served as a warning for the public to distance themselves from the dangerous currents of thought and curiosity. Content with dull, short-term happiness, the population stayed afloat in the supervised waters. The waters, poisoned by a society that was warped by the government, was full of murky labels and polluted stereotypes that sinked into the city’s population, intoxicating their minds to make judgmental connections between real life and society. These toxins bled through in conversations, “fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it” (97), interactions, “the others would walk off and leave me talking, or threaten me” (25), and authority, “the search is over, Montag is dead; a crime against society has been avenged” (149). Time and time again, however, countless similarities surfaced between the nearly 60 year-old novel and real-life experiences from today. The public is growing more impersonal and allowing more of an influence from society to pour into their lives. Countless modern-day citizens find it easy to blame society for most of their problems, however, society only sets up labels and stereotypes- we alone are the ones that put meaning behind them, exercise them throughout our daily lives. How long will it be before our world takes a dip into Ray Bardbuy’s waters?
In a society where material items are more important than living like a human being the society is given the ability to create emotionless inhabitants, which Ray Bradbury illustrates in the society of his novel Fahrenheit 451 where having material objects is more important to the people than living lives worthy of human beings. Being human beings can be described as feeling genuine emotions like love and sadness, which no longer exist in the society where Montag lives. He and his wife Mildred do not even remember when they met “’When did we meet? And where?’…’Why, it was at—‘ she stopped…’Funny, how funny , not to remember where or when you met your husband’r wife” (Bradbury 42, 43). Also, the feeling of sadness is avoided at all costs, books of all kinds being set a flame because they do not bring joy. Legitimate human beings do not need material things to be pleased; they do not feel the need to constantly want. Being an actual human being who experiences true emotions is more important than gaining artificial sensation from wall-to-wall TV screens and sea shells. When a person becomes emotionless - a non human being - they become as easy to train or herd as animals, and they would not find a reason to fight back. The government in Fahrenheit 451 first creates emotionless people by eliminating all things that provoke feeling like books and conversation, and replacing them with mind numbing distractions. Once they have achieved that goal they begin herding the citizens, making it harder for human beings to break away. It is easy to follow along with the crowd and intimidating to leave, which is why Montag and Mildred live meaningless lives, going along with whatever the TV says, floating along and living in distractions like endless entertainment and burning knowledge found in books. Unfortunately Mildred never realizes this because the ways of the society has swallowed her up. Entertainment and distractions were the only thing she lived for. Montag on the other hand realizes he is not living the life of a human being when his ways are questioned by an unusual teenager, Clarisse. “‘There’s dew on the grass in the morning.’ He suddenly couldn’t remember if he knew that or not, and it made him quite irritable. ‘And if you look…there’s a man in the moon.’ He hadn’t looked in a long time. They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable…”(Bradbury 9). The fact that Montag does not know these simple facts is frustrating and odd to him. This small encounter can be called Montag’s epiphany. Even after Montag realizes the society is corrupt he is hesitant to do anything and for the first time in a long time experiences the feeling of fear, a lost human emotion in the world of Fahrenheit 451.
Kayla Williams
People with a lack of self knowledge can slip into a definition of themselves set by the people with power in that society which leads to a false happiness in “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. The citizens of the society in this novel have no identity. They have unoriginal thoughts and feelings inputted into them by the government of the society. Society taught them if something felt good it was good and it if made you feel bad then it was bad. This definition of “happiness” was portrayed onto the citizens. When these citizens with no self knowledge or identity are told of these ideas of “happiness” they slip into the governments set definition of themselves. Mass amounts of citizens all begin to act and do the same things which cause the society to fall under the allusion of a false happiness. In “Fahrenheit 451” Mildred is a prime example of a member of society that lacks self knowledge and slips into the governments set definition of themselves and the allusion of false happiness. Mildred’s identity was so far off that Montag imagined she would barely even be able to recognize herself. “She saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own” (Bradbury 159). Her complete lack of self knowledge caused her to slip into someone else’s definition of happiness and she could barely even recognize her own face.
People with a lack of self knowledge can slip into a definition of themselves set by the people with power in that society which leads to a false happiness in “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. The citizens of the society in this novel have no identity. They have unoriginal thoughts and feelings inputted into them by the government of the society. Society taught them if something felt good it was good and it if made you feel bad then it was bad. This definition of “happiness” was portrayed onto the citizens. When these citizens with no self knowledge or identity are told of these ideas of “happiness” they slip into the governments set definition of themselves. Mass amounts of citizens all begin to act and do the same things which cause the society to fall under the allusion of a false happiness. In “Fahrenheit 451” Mildred is a prime example of a member of society that lacks self knowledge and slips into the governments set definition of themselves and the allusion of false happiness. Mildred’s identity was so far off that Montag imagined she would barely even be able to recognize herself. “She saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own” (Bradbury 159). Her complete lack of self knowledge caused her to slip into someone else’s definition of happiness and she could barely even recognize her own face.
Amanda Umbehauer
In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the topic of ignorance verses knowledge is introduced and brought up throughout the novel. In the highly-censored and futuristic world that takes the setting of the novel, the government and most of society believe that ignorance means happiness, and that recognizing reality will just disrupt it. In other words, does not knowing the truth make one happier, or does being aware of the reality bring happiness? The government in this novel is burning and making books illegal, and promoting ignorance. In calling themselves the “Happiness Boys,” Beaty and the other firemen are burning books to stop the “torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy” from “[drowning] [their] world” (Bradbury 62). In other words, they are taking away peoples’ freedom of knowledge, and replacing it with an empty truth. The character Clarisse, who seems to know the truth that most citizens are not aware of, symbolizes those who ask questions and have a mind of their own. She lets Montag know of a past world where “firemen put fires out, instead of [starting] them” (Bradbury 8). Montag, like most others, is so unaware of this and thinks of it as some kind of false myth. This displays the effects of burning books and censoring the truth; people become extremely unaware of both the present and the past. The burning of books and knowledge in this novel is also the society’s way of creating the perfect world. In this fantastical world, everyone should be ignorant, and unaware of the outside world. This way, everyone is “happy” because they simply do not know about war, and the things that are wrong with society.
In Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," character development plays a major role in the imagery of the novel. As Montag's conciousness begins to develop, so do his views of the things he thought he knew. Fire is the core element that they focus on in relation to the main character. In the beginning of the novel, fire was used to destroy all that caused a gaining of knowledge in order to avoid any conflict or controvercy among the masses. A book was viewed as "a loaded gun in the house next door" (Bradbury 58), so the aim was to burn it all in order to completely disintigrate any potential food for thought possible to avoid any disagreement. This made sense to Montag, as an average man among society working alongside the cause of death of the intellectual, as he was a fireman meant to burn books wherever they may stand. His intentions were as simple, blind and destructive as the fires' in which he lit: burn it all and enjoy the show. As the story progresses, Montag goes through what one could consider, an internal combustion or realization that he spends a great deal of time trying to make sense of. At this point fire is seems much more spontaneous and something much less controllable to Montag and an inadequate solution to the world's troubles. He eventually loses sight of all he thought he knew. Guy Montag didn't have a sense of what he thought reality was any longer which ironically leads him to refer to himself as "drowning" (Bradbury 131) as he had lost his path trying to work his way past the flames. This internal flame basically causes Guy to explode on the world outside and completely destroy everything he once was and knew due to frustration with lack of knowledge. This gave him the motivation to find a way out of the city knowing that if he was caught, it wouldn't matter because he was starting new with nothing to lose. Once he worked his way out of the city, Montag found himself discovering new things of both fire and silence. In this silence, he did not find a plug keeping his brain away from thought, but suddenly he felt as though he had plenty of time for contemplation. This led him to find the answer to the question as to why he could no longer burn; the question that led him to madness as he tried to find reason for anything at all. "...if he burnt things with the fireman and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!" (Bradbury 141) With both firemen and the sun at work, what would there be to know? With the sun showing no sign of ceasing, Guy had to quit. There was no escaping fire as Montag had hoped, but now he understood there was another side to fire that he had yet to discover until he met a group of intellectuals while walking around the railroad tracks where he saw, not a burn, but a warm glow in the distance coming from their bonfire. It was here that Montag's character comes to another conclusion of fire. The reader understands this vision as well, seeing fire as light, comfort, guidance, or, as Guy referred to it as, "warming" (Bradbury 145). Fire had now become more of a radiation and a chance of rebirth for both Montag and the rest of man. With evolution of the human consciousness such as this, the way one conjures reality completely changes beyond one's imagination.
~Allison LaRochelle
Throughout history, governmental systems have been devising ways in which to control their citizens. In his novel "Fahrenheit 451", Ray Bradbury shows that one of the most effective ways to maintain control over the citizens in any country is through the manipulation of information. Through the actions and words of characters such as Captain Beatty, Mildred, and Mrs. Phelps, Bradbury is able to convey how little the citizens are aware of. However, their lack of knowledge succeeds in keeping them happy. Captain Beatty explains, "Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book" (Bradbury 59). Beyond simply withholding information, the government goes as far as changing the facts in order to keep the citizens happy. When Montag introduces a conversation about the war with Mildred and her friends, Mrs. Phelps helps to show just how little the country knows. She tells us, "..the army called Pete yesterday. He'll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours, they said, and everyone home” (Bradbury 94). However, characters such as Professor Faber and Montag himself introduce conflicting facts about the length and intensity of the war later on in the novel. The characters in Bradbury’s novel are pivotal in conveying the importance of knowledge or lack thereof to the happiness and cooperation of a character. Where more ignorant characters such as Mildred and Mrs. Phelps are content and happy in their simple lives, characters that are more aware or have greater access to true information prove to be much less satisfied. This is most obviously shown through Montag and Professor Faber. Their unhappiness is demonstrated by their yearning for rebellion and revolution, and their disregard for the country’s rules, particularly involving the reading and holding of books. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the United States government maintains an accepted dictatorial control over its citizens by withholding information that has the potential to spark a rebellion or cause dissatisfaction among its citizens.
In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury takes the reader to a future where the people are all completely desensitized and where reality is shrouded by the parlor ‘families’ that inhabit every second of their lives. Tragic things such as abortion and death are constantly brushed off throughout the novel. Mildred has her friends over and miracles such as childbirth are downplayed constantly. One of Mildred’s “friends”, Mrs. Bowles, regarding her children, casually claims “I plunk the children in school 9 days out of ten…it’s like washing clothes: stuff the laundry in and slam the lid.” (96) All values have been tossed aside in order for the government to stay in control and keep the people “happy”. However the constant hiding of real world sadness leaves the reader pondering how anyone can know happiness without ever truly experiencing sadness and feeling pain. Happiness is all relative, and by taking away pain the people of this future world lack substance and anything interesting because they never have suffered or had any real world experiences. True happiness is found when one conquers their own suffering, and upon Mildred’s imminent death Guy realizes “It’s strange, I don’t miss her, it’s strange I don’t feel much of anything.”(155). It is difficult to fathom losing a loved one, it is impossible to imagine not feeling anything upon their loss.
In the novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, Mildred Montag and Clarisse McClellan are used to portray the typical person in their time's society and the rather unusual and inquisitive person in their time's society. Also, they are used to depict what an individual should act like and what an individual shouldn't act like. While Mildred Montag, Guy Montag's wife, is trained how to act by the society around her, Clarisse McClellan, a 17 year old girl whom Guy meets on the streets, is not influenced by others; she questions society and is taught by her uncle of a time where things were different.
Mildred Montag is society's idea of "happy." She loves her wall-sized television sets and considers the actors and actresses on the show her "family." She also uses her "Seashell Radio" every night in bed. She doesn't question anything or anyone and keeps to herself, just as she is manipulated to do. Mildred is trained to believe that she is, in fact, happy, when in reality , she isn't. This is proven when, one night, Guy comes home to find Mildred laying in her bed, appearing as to be listening to her Seashell. Guy describes her as being, "...like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain..." (Bradbury, 13). When Guy stumbles over an empty bottle of sleeping pills, he realizes that Mildred has attempted suicide and makes a call to the Emergency Hospital, which frequently gets "cases nine or ten a night" (Bradbury, 15) of suicide attempts. When Guy brings this up to Mildred sometime after, she claims she "wouldn't do a thing like that." (Bradbury, 19). Mildred refuses to believe that she isn't happy because everyone around her has molded her brain to do so.
In contrast, Clarisse McClellan is not fooled by society and knows that the people around her, claiming to be happy, are actually not. She is told of a time, by her uncle, where people were genuinely happy. During this time, people could read as much as they wanted, hold conversations with other people as often as they wanted, and go on walks for fun. They were allowed to think for themselves and have a personality. One night, Guy crosses paths with Clarisse, and she shares her knowledge of this time with him. She also reveals of a time "long ago where firemen put fires out instead of going to start them." (Bradbury, 8) Guy is first baffled by this information, but later thinks about the knowledge given to him by Clarisse, and starts to believe it. Clarisse opens Guy's eyes to what the world should be like. Soon after Clarisse and Guy met, Clarisse was killed by a speeding driver while she was on one of her illegal walks at night. The speeding driver represents what the society is like now, and Clarisse on her walk represents what it used to be like.
In conclusion, Mildred Montag and Clarisse McClellan represent the current society and the old society, what happy is now and what used to be, and peoples personalities today and in the past. The are both important characters in the novel because they make readers aware of two completely different figures, one typical and one rare.
Although the late Ray Bradbury proposed many themes and ideas over the course of “Fahrenheit 451”, one of the focal points is the decision of whether “Ignorance is bliss” is actually a true statement. In Bradbury’s seemingly utopian society (though it is actually more dystopian), firemen are placed in charge of burning books to keep knowledge out of the hands of the people. Guy Montag, as one of these firemen, soon begins to question this tactic after conversing with a teenaged girl named Clarisse McClellan, who is full of more worldly knowledge than anyone he knows, also seems to be happier than them as well. Montag’s wife, Mildred, who spends all day staring at her parlor screens conversing with her “family”, is unaware that there is more to life than the cheap thrills of instant gratification, though Montag isn’t. Knowledge is something that is frowned upon in this society, and the public’s distaste for the scholarly shows how ingrained the philosophy of “Ignorance equals happiness” is. Make “each man the image of every other; then all are happy” (Bradbury 58) states Captain Beatty, a high-ranking fireman. That is the justification for the book burnings: without exposure to any concepts that are foreign to you through books, then you can’t dispute them with someone else. But this happiness is a shallow one, as Montag soon discovers. When he begins to read the books he has stolen over his years as a fireman, his eyes begin to open to the true happiness that comes with knowledge. He no longer believes that destroying books is right and just, and no longer wishes to destroy, in effect, the potential true happiness of his world. He no longer feels that knowledge is a dirty thing to be swept under the rug and forgotten, but instead to be embraced and shared. Montag no longer believes that “Ignorance is bliss”, and doesn’t want the rest of society to think so either.
- Jack McLoone
In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the concept of quantity versus quality is presented throughout the society. Mildred, a main character, demonstrates that people in the society strived to obtain quantity not quality. To demonstrate, Mildred wanted a fourth parlor wall, even though she already had three that were all the same. In addition, the members of the society were not looking for a meaning in what they had, they just wanted a lot of whatever they could obtain. Quality was of no value to any of the citizens. They were only interested in the amount of materialistic items they could get into their hands. This is the reason as to why the government wanted to burn all the books. The books had meaning and quality; they got the citizens to think about life and new ideas. The government wanted control over their thinking processes; they wanted them to have a desire for quantity over quality. THe citizens of the society believed the only way to achieve happiness was to have everything they ever dreamed of. So, in order to achieve this, they thought it would be best to get everything possible. They even stated, "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing" (Bradbury 82). Quantity versus quality is an issue covered in many novels. It is an issue spread throughout the text in this novel that allows the reader to think upon the ways desperation and strong desires are wanted.
-Maya Smith
Planting seeds can be an unforgiving task. In order for the seed to take root and grow, certain requirements must first be met. The soil must have nutrients, there must be constant sunlight, and there must be a suitable amount of water given to the plant daily. But once the seed breaks open, and the roots begin to take hold, it is very difficult to stop further development. The plant is at a stable stage where it can grow on its own, without as much attention needed. So, the plant grows and grows by itself until it is mature enough to fulfill the task that it was originally planted for, whether it is beauty, food, aroma, ect. Quite often, thoughts work the same way. In fact, that is exactly what happened to Guy Montag in Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451”. After meeting a strange seventeen year old girl named Clarisse McClellan, Montag’s eyes are opened to a whole new world of possibilities. His previous thoughts and ideas about the world began to crumble as he tried to make sense of the knowledge he had just acquired. So, like a seed, the thought was planted into his head. The thought of a different way of life, a better way of life that was based on Clarisse, and allowed people to think for themselves rather than immediately adopt all ideas given to them without question. The more Montag thought of Clarisse, the more the thought of a better life grew until it turned into an idea. The next step was an obvious one to Montag: take action. He needed to do something about the world he lived in. The world where higher authorities “cram [people] full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information” so that the citizens “will get a sense of motion without moving” (Bradbury 61). He needed to help people to understand that there was more to life than just talking to a wall with moving pictures on it. Life had the potential to have substance, and meaning, but only if one cared enough to try to unlock the possibility of thought, like Clarisse.
-Sophie Buchanan
A human being is someone who is content with themselves and their life. They do not need different objects to distract them and make them happy, and they are not repetitively wanting more or the newer version of a certain thing. In his novel Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury shows how in a highly materialistic society, many people can become “human havings” and lose the human being in them, constantly wanting more and newer versions of something, but never stopping to think about how good their life is even without that newer thing. Mildred is a perfect representation of a “human having”. She always wants the best of everything and is constantly bothering Montag to get her a fourth wall, even though they just got a third wall and the fourth wall could possibly put them into debt. Mildred is constantly attached to the parlor walls or “family”; even when her friends are over, they sit and watch the TV together, each stuck in their own little worlds. This keeps them from questioning the way their lives are and being content with themselves. One night when walking home from a fire call, Montag is confronted by his teenage neighbor, Clarisse. Clarisse is one of the few human beings in the book. She is very confident in herself, not afraid to speak her mind and ask why things happen. Because of this she stands out from everyone else and is thought of as an outcast. At first Montag finds her odd because of things she says. During a conversation Clarisse tells Montag, “Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.”(Bradbury 9).This irritates Montag but gets him to start to think about how the citizens of his society just rush through life and do not think or stop to realize there is more in life than what is on their parlor walls. One time just before she leaves to go to her house she asks Montag “Are you happy?”(Bradbury 11). Montag finds this a weird question to be asked for he believes he is happy; he later realizes that he is truly not. Montag realizes he is not happy because he is missing everyday experiences in life with others and nature. This first occurs to him when Clarisse asks him if he realizes that there is dew on the grass in the morning and he cannot remember the last time he stopped to notice that. Montag realizes that like the majority of his society, he is rushing through life and not taking time to examine the delicate details of it. This bothers him and causes him to make changes that ultimately transform him from a “human having” to a human being by the end of the book.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, people are supplied with the illusion of happiness from the government. The government makes sure that people are constantly distracted by technology, with the ‘families’ in their parlors. They do not want people to think because then people will start to become a problem for them. Throughout the novel intelligent people are referred to as a problem to the system and the only that problem can be resolved is to get rid of it by killing the person. “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” (Bradbury 58). Guy Montag soon realizes this. He realizes that all his life he has been doing one massive mistake, he was burning knowledge, and without that knowledge people will be the government’s slaves. He decides to risk his life for books so he can make sure that future generations can prosper with knowledge and to make sure that the government will not be able to brainwash the citizens. “ We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them,”(Bradbury 163). The reason Bradbury depicts this in his novel is to make sure that the future will never come out to this. He wants to preserve history so people can learn from the past.
Ray Bradbury creatively portrays the dystopian society where citizens are cut off from intellect in the novel Fahrenheit 451, a society where books are burned and reading is prohibited and monitored by the government. As a fireman, the main character Guy Montag enjoys partaking in the burning of the books, believing that because they are inanimate objects, demolishing them is a light-hearted matter. After one particular incident, Guy discusses with his wife Mildred the significance behind the books and why they should not be destroyed any longer. “You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing." (Bradbury 46) It is evident that Guy Montag has had the realization that books are more then just paper and words. She forced the idea of the importance of books into his brain by taking outstanding actions to save them. These literary works represent the people behind them, the authors and their thoughts and ideas of the world. Bradbury conveyed this point in order to teach the reader that their freedom to read books is being taken away. In turn, there freedom to right books and talk about them is abolished. Communication is stifled and the expression of ideas comes to a halt, causing the characters to conform into a meaningless lifestyle of TV shows and false socialization. The fight against the forces that are burning the books is so important because books directly symbolize freedom. As they take away the books the people are left with nothing but the information that the government wants you to know.
~Chloe Hourigan
Sovereignty, independence, liberty, often these words are associated with one primary concept and belief: freedom. With the right of a free will, one is given allowance to have complete control of one’s self-actions and decision. However, through pure manipulation and seemingly overpowered special interest groups, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 candidly exploits what our own society and countless others could become a one mirroring a totalitarian regime. To commence, the Freedom that the citizens had been granted from their hierarchy (incumbent government officials) was tagged with a plethora of restrictions and limitations. In the novel, the freedom the citizens have was only that the government had facilitated for them. In order for one to be able to maintain independence, one must fully cognizant of what your liberties are. If one is not all knowing of one’s rights, one is unable to question and challenge the government, thus giving the current officials to take full advantage of the non-educated public and laws are then manipulated into what they desired. And they cannot defy the government’s actions since they are incapable of doing so. In 451, given this illusion of pleasure and happiness, the population is blind sighted by what the government was doing to their rights. No religion. No free speech. No literary freedom. No rights. None at all. Likewise, in order to earn the trust of all without question, the government in 451 found it a requisition to alter the past to provide this assurance. “Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin” (Bradbury 34). This quote truly exemplifies how amending the past can frankly have a tremendous influence the people that are educated on it. Pleasure and happiness are other tools that the leading bureaucrats of the presiding government utilized in their plot to attain outright control over the public. In this, the governed are instructed to not to worry in the least over political complications and rather on things that allow for the emotion of pleasure to be expressed. Anything thought to be a cause of some sort of dispute among the people was forbidden immediately. As Faber stated, “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the faces of life. The comfortable people want only the wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, and expressionless” (Bradbury 83). With this quotation, it explains that the people don’t long for controversy in quite forthrightly, anything that they do. Instead, they only request for these feelings of placidness. As Beatty remarked, “So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything do with automatic reflex…I’ll think I’m responding to a play, when it’s only a tactile reaction”(Bradbury 61). Overall, This totalitarian nation (a modern American area, as proposed by Bradbury) emulates countries of a communistic type of belief system: if one is to go against the flow of government actions and regulations (the owning of books in 451), severe consequences will soon follow. In the United States, our current government was founded on three consequential principles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Fortunately, we always know of our rights and laws are created protect and defend this notion. The Land of the Free is quite frankly one of the farthest things from a hegemonic supremacy; conversely, if we become unable to question unethical laws, the government that swore to protect the constitution and all those under its mighty jurisdiction may slip to the likes of greed and corruption. In essence, if we are to not question laws or become knowledgeable of them, our very civilization could eventually parallel Bradbury’s mock society in the novel. To conclude, to maintain our very way of life, we must acknowledge our rights for what they are and we must be capable to challenge the government if something is unjust; if we don’t, we may just lose everything we hold dear to us.
In a materialistic society where the dominant ideology is that consumption leads to happiness, the mass use of advertisements create the illusion that if the citizens have material items, they will obtain long-term happiness in truth, these products give sporadic streams of short-term happiness; in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the characters must make the decision to conform to the ideology of society or be truly happy with their lives. This plot makes the audience question: do we strive to be content with our own lives, or to be a part of the majority? Montag’s wife has already decided what her answer is: she is comfortable in the majority. Mildred, symbolizing the mass of their society, begs Montag to pay for the installation of a 4th wall in their bedroom made out of a television sreen “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed” (Bradbury 20). Bombarded with advertisements that brainwash her, and the rest of society, Mildred believes that if she buys the product that the corporation is selling, she will be happy. In the novel those who are truly happy are intellectuals who abandon modern society and pursue a life of simplicity and answers; while those who believe they have the key to happiness are the bulk of society that give in to the evils of advertising and become the most extreme form of consumers. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Clarisse McClellan asks Montag if he is happy. Curently living under the ideology of their society, Montag believes his possessions make him happy, but after Clasisse sincerely asks him, he starts to wonder if he is actually is content. Montag says “’Happy! Of all the nonsense.’ He stopped laughing… ‘Of course I’m happy. What does she think? I’m not?’ He asked the quiet rooms” (Bradbury 10). This quote marks the start of Montag’s fall into the sorrows of the truth and rise into enlightenment. By the end of the novel Montag realizes to be truly happy he must branch out from the status quo and question the dominant ideology of society, thus enabling him to realize that to be truly happy he must break out of the majority and become part of the minority.
-Jenny McKenna
In a dystopian nation where human nature conforms, there is a development of a herd mentality in society. Due to the fact that citizens behave analogously, this government easily gains control without the obstacle of individual critical thinking. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury illustrates this kind of power in compliance. A majority of members of this society are satisfied to live with similar opinions, homes, employment, and thoughts. This gives the government an opportunity for complete control over the citizenry because it is apparent throughout the novel that human nature is inclined towards conformity. As Beatty explains to Montag, “We must all be alike…Each man the image of every other, then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.” (Bradbury 58) This ideology demonstrates that conformity is not only beneficial to the government, it gives citizens a chance to blend in, feel safe, and have a satisfied, mediocre existence. This further displays how comfortable human nature is with keeping its place in society. Why is this? How is it that in today’s world, originality is promoted and there is a colossal variety of ideas and discoveries, but in Bradbury’s future, that multitude is cut down, and power is drawn from its absence? Human nature seems to have an instinct to reduce innovation and personal thinking. This leads to control-hungry government and a desire by society for similarity. Beatty additionally tells Montag that citizens have perpetually feared what’s different, and that “You always dread the unfamiliar” (Bradbury 58).
"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace"-Dalai Lama. Ray Bradbury, who wrote Fahrenheit 451, created a society that revolved entirely around ignorance and insensitivity. Citizens are similar to shells on a beach, traveling back and forth on the shore line. They move with the current and the flow of the ocean, or in this case, society and don't fight it. In some cases, this is a great quality to obtain, because "going with the flow" can sometimes lead towards better opportunities. But at the same time, not being able to stand up for what you believe in can ruin the chance of involvement. The world will go nowhere, if everyone continues doing what they always have, being the same people every day; not exploring new ways of thinking. What kind of world would we be living in if we never evolved? Living this way can be difficult, and usually, there's at least one person who feels differently about the situation. That one person is the one that can turn it all around for the better. That person, in the novel, happens to be the main character, Guy Montag. Although, the true credit goes to Clarisse McClellan, who put the ideas of nature and loving into Montag's head. Montag was surrounded by people who watched television on full-size walls and couldn't even keep a good conversation going; people that don’t notice nature and that “there’s dew on the grass in the morning” (Bradbury 9). Being encompassed by ignorant people, Montag had to register all of the ideas he was processing and deciding to make them public. The real trouble, for him, was changing something once it’s been the same way for a long time. For instance, firemen had been starting the fires for generations, and banning books. What Montag did truly made him a hero, even if some thought he was displaying an act of betrayal. People mocked Montag for his questioning on society. The people of the society probably couldn’t admit to themselves that they were scared of a life that Montag was thinking about; one with love and appreciation and nature, because it was unfamiliar to them. They have every right to be nervous, because it’s something new to them. But the important thing is that they can try it out and learn for themselves what it’s all about. You never know, if you don’t try. I agree with Dalai when he talks about peace because peace is when everyone in society is happy and content with their environment and what is going on around them. Montag was obliviously not satisfied; therefore he did something about it. If only there were braver people like Montag in our society, today.
-Jaimie Berube
The line between what is a “want” and what is a “need” is blurred by the society of Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 because of the technology’s ability to lure them into a fake reality. The technology is everywhere and is a huge part of the people’s daily lives. However, it has caused them to live false lives. Their happiness, ability to socialize, and grips with the real world are lost because of how the technology controls their way of living. At one point in the novel, Montag’s wife, Mildred, asks Montag when they can get another wall TV. Montag asks her why she would want that and Mildred responds with "It's only two thousand dollars...And I should think you'd consider me sometimes. If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms. We could do without a few things." (Bradbury 20) She states that the room would not be hers at all, but other peoples. By saying this she is saying that she wants to live in a fake reality. She also states that they could spare some things to get the money. This is implying that the wall TV is more or less a need, rather than a luxury. In this instance, her technology has become a way to live in an unreal life and has taken predominance over other necessities. When the Montag tells the joke about the woman who was obsessed with her phone, he says ”Well, then, why didn't he buy himself an audio-Seashell broadcasting station and talk to his wife late at night, murmur, whisper, shout, scream, yell? (Bradbury 42) He feels that his wife is so infatuated with the seashell that she barley socializes with him. Once again she’s letting her love for technology control her. It has been proven that human socialization is a key part in a person’s development and character. It can be concluded that a social life is a need. Mildred in this instance in neglecting a need and substituting it with a want that she considers a need, the want being technology. In conclusion, the society in Fahrenheit 451 is crazed by the technology, and because of this craze the line between “wants” and “needs” is broken.
-Dillon Butler
Going into "Fahrenheit 451" a reader may be a little uneasy at first. This book was important when it was first published so therefore any highschooler must be forced to read it due to it's influential significance. In this, the book has been worn down to a dreaded experience, before the reader even glances the first page. The reader already hates it without knowing anything about it. But once the reader does actually read, he will find not only a wonderful plot, but also beautiful writing. One thing that really stands out in "Fahrenheit 451" is Ray Bradbury's use of repetition. He likes to count things off and repeat words here and there. He really gives a whole new meaning to the word "emphasis". For example, "The jet bombers going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them, one and one and one and another and another and another, did all the screaming for him" (Bradbury 14). This not only emphasizes just how much noise there was and how many jets there were but it also gives the readers an anxious feeling. A feeling of wanting to scream right next to these jet bombers and Guy Montag. But not only does Ray Bradbury use repetition to create a true feeling of anxiety and excitement, he also uses it to show a need for something repetitive to calm the nerves. He does so by giving you Guy Montag's thoughts when he's anxious and confused: "One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One, Clarisse. Two, Mildred. Three, uncle. Four, fire. One, Mildred, two Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse," (Bradbury 18). People believe that counting helps calm the nerves and Bradbury definitely uses that in "Fahrenheit 451". Through his beautiful words and imagery, his use of repetition stands out the brightest and the loudest.
-Siobhan Hansen
Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, by creating a society in which technology controls basic human function in people’s lives, explains that a person’s social behavior becomes unhealthy and they cease to function as a proper human being. A human being thinks for themselves and has their own beliefs. A human being develops a personality and becomes individual through their experiences in life. A human being has emotions and feelings that they recognize and find reasons for with or without the help of another. Asking the reason behind an idea or action is part of human nature. In the novel, Mildred lacks personality and control over her thoughts and beliefs because she uses technology everyday and does nothing else. The TV parlor in her home fascinates her mind; her television habit nullifies her personal opinions in life. Her self-conscience disappears into the back of her brain and fights to get up front, because every day, technology brainwashes Mildred into believing whatever it has to say. Confused of her emotions, she does not even recognize the sadness in her heart. She denies killing herself, because “what would [she] want to go and do a silly thing like that for?” (Bradbury 19). Furthermore, Mildred’s entire social life revolves around technology. For example, socializing to her includes inviting her friends over to watch and talk about TV. They cannot think of anything else to do. If they were human beings, they would have feelings that they would want to get out of them and share. Instead, they would rather not talk politics, because it creates conflict. A healthy social life, people interact with one another and can find real happiness while being around each other. Usually in a social life, one can feel comfortable around people and enjoy their company. Mildred and her friends do not know how it feels because of the technology around them. Unlike Mildred and her friends and most of society’s people, Clarisse McClellan is a human being, because she knows what it feels like to actually have emotion and thought. Her mind does not focus on how things happen, but why they happen. Joyfulness comes from within her. She does not spend much time looking at parlor walls or using technology much at all, “so [she has] lots of time for crazy thoughts” (Bradbury 9). Her mind wanders off into thoughts of the world and different possibilities in life. Unlike Mildred and most people, Clarisse is happy. She knows who she is; she knows she is individual. She fights to speak out her opinions and thoughts, but she knows she cannot because of the way the world is. When she communicated with Montag in the beginning of the book, she was not afraid to show off who she was. Because her and her family knows what love and happiness is, it shows they have great social behaviors towards each other. They do not use their technology very often, and they live a nice life. However, there are few people like them. A world full of people who reflect on one another does not spin on its axis. Technology may captivate people, but it has come to the point of addiction; it ruins the social behavior of people, therefore causing them not to function like a real human being. As long as everyone considers one another, having different opinions makes the world go round.
-Juliana Franco
Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" brings forth such ridiculously controversial thinking over topics like government censorship, indoctrination, and the power of advertising that is would take eons to fully discuss all of them. But one of these topics takes precedence over the rest and that is the essence of teaching children. In a section of the novel Guy Montag, the protagonist, questions his perfect job entirely. Being one of the well known "firemen" his only job is to burn books. As far as he knows this was always how life was. Yet recently, Guy has been gaining conscience and questioning his seemingly innocent job. Guy relays an idea in his mind that a time in the past "firemen [prevented] fires rather than stoke them up" (Bradbury 34). Guy's friends respond to this with their automatic flash of their handbooks and the ingrained slogans of the firemen of America that could be falsely written as easily as soaking up water with a sponge. It is a topic too large to understand for me at least that in time some of the most important history of our world can be forgotten. The friends continue to believe that Benjamin Franklin was the first fireman. The dramatic irony here is so great that I have trouble screaming out at the book that they are wrong. But nonetheless indoctrination and the lies told here are one of the many reasons I am afraid of governments like communism. The power the government has is enormous. Take the Holocaust for instance, it is my sole duty as a jew to pass on history of our people so it won't happen again. Imagine a world where people do not learn from their mistakes the ending would be terrifying. It is truly insane when one ponders the power of censorship. And with ignorance comes bliss and when a certain someone (Guy Montag *cough cough*) decides to step over that line and find out what is actually going on the conclusion is not a pretty sight. If the most important parts of history in the world are not lost in the ever-growing sea of technology, media, and people.
The conformist society in Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” depicts the willingness of people to give up their individuality in order to fit into a more comfortable, set definition of who they “should” be. What these characters do not realize is that lacking a personal identity is more destructive than abstaining from the opinions of the majority. When new technology begins to take over the society in “Fahrenheit 451”, it entices people to the point where they begin to voluntarily adhere to the new definition of “happiness”. The bans on the newly proclaimed useless books limit the personal emotions experienced by people and enforce the idea that anything that is not “happy” is wrong. People feel more comfortable being “wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless” (Bradbury 83). Faber explains to Montag that it was the people who allowed heavy censorship on books, saying that, “No one wanted them back. No one missed them…the Government, seeing how advantageous it was…circled the situation with your fire eaters” (Bradbury 89). Finding no problem in shedding their individuality, the people become identical copies of “happy” human beings. Bradbury excludes characters’ distinguishable traits, such as race and facial features, to show that the individual faces have blurred into a conformed group. Even Faber, who avoided succumbing to the technological “happiness”, gives in to fear and cannot bring himself to continue to stand up to the majority. He admits he was “one of the innocents who could have spoken up…but did not speak and thus became guilty” (Bradbury 82). Rather than profess his identity, Faber chooses to hide in his house and allow the nation to deteriorate. Falling into a new definition of herself comes as easily to Mildred as playing a part in the television shows she watches on the wall. At ease in her new persona, Mildred represents the society as a whole, which has turned its back on individuality to favor an act that was scripted by the government. Montag pictures Mildred watching TV in her hotel “leaning anxiously as if to plunge…into that swarming immensity of color to drown in its bright happiness” and then finally seeing a true reflection of herself as the bomb drops (Bradbury 159). This bomb destroys a city in which originality was unheard of and its people had allowed for a façade of “happiness” to suppress their inner identities. “Fahrenheit 451” highlights the capability of humans to disregard their individuality for the complacent aspects of a previously set idea of how one should behave. The characters voluntarily gave up books and self–knowledge to accommodate the definitions authority was eager to present; therefore, individuals caused the destruction of their identities as well as their society.
~Elly McCarthy
While reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, I noticed three key signs, Government control, education, and television. The three somehow all connect. Guy Montag, the main character is a firefighter, and at first he loves his job. He burns books for a living, this is the first sign of knowledge but we are unaware of it, this early into the book. Books are illegal, free thought is prohibited and activities are tightly organized. The government has taken away the citizens’ ability to have self-expression and replace it with a cheap version of what they call “happiness”. The citizens perform daily actions based on what the government says is legal or permit-able. One day he meets a girl, Clarisse McClellan. Guy soon begins to fancy Clarisse. He says he admires the way she “thinks”, because she isn’t like his wife who sits and watches TV all day. Clarisse is aware of what’s going on in the town, unlike the other inhabitants that live within the area. Guy contemplates on leaving his wife but when he decides to do this he soon finds out Clarisse is killed. The Government had her hit by a car because they feared if anyone knew of their doings, it would be complete chaos. Everyone in this town watches Television all day, they never ask difficult questions, and they are never forced to do anything to strenuous. The citizens do feel a sense of dissatisfaction, but never do anything to change the matter. They fear the government will kill them if they speak their mind. Television is the enemy in F451. It’s responsible for replacing literature, intellectualism, curiosity, and free thought. As guy states tv “chokes [the people] so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information--because facts of that sort don’t change” (Bradbury 61). Aside from that, it is also a substitute for family, friendship, and any sort of real conversation. The government feeds this re-occurring thought that people are happier when they don’t have to think. Television is also a way the Government keeps the citizens oppressed, leaving them (The government) with the power. Is Bradbury telling us our reality is nothing more than a truth in the book? It seems as if Bradbury wrote to tell us that if we don’t stop watching television and losing our minds to silly artificial things, we’ll be easy to manipulate (ex. by the government) and we’ll lose the ability to have free thoughts and expression.
~ Autumn F. Byrd
As humans, we all have much in common; however, this does not imply that we are all the same. People may be similar but no person is made to be exactly as another. All across the globe people give attention to fitting in and being just like everyone else, but this allows the concept of conformity to be socially accepted when in reality it shouldn't be promoted, and Ray Bradbury exemplifies this throughout his novel "Fahrenheit 451". There lies a line between the concept of individuality and conformity which is constantly misconceived and tampered with throughout the pages of the novel. Clarisse and her family do the job of demonstrating the values of individuality and the good it brings to the table; however, Mildred contradicts their beliefs with her time spent watching TV just like every other person in society. Clarisse's family spends time having intellectual and profound conversations while Mildred, along with the rest of the population, spends time with "the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces…the gibbering pack of tree apes that [say] nothing" (Bradbury 44). For the common person there is no drive for individuality but rather having a full room of TVs to show off or sea shells to listen to. Clarisse describes the interactions between the average people by saying that "they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anybody else" (Bradbury 31). This makes it apparent that everybody doing the same thing is considered "right" and "sane". The thought of being an individual crosses Montag's mind a plethora of times but he keeps it to himself. He doesn't want to stray too far from the "sane" thoughts he should be having before being ostracized by the rest of society who doesn't appreciate his ability to question. However, when Montag does decide to openly talk about the subject with his friend Beatty, Beatty simply has all the answers. Beatty makes a point that "we must all be alike..each man the image of every other", but how happy can anybody be when they completely lose sight of their individuality to fit in with the "norm" of society and keep "sane" (Bradbury 58). We may be similar but what's an identity to somebody if you share that same identity with every other person in the world? As humans we strive to be accepted, but Bradbury shows how a society wrapped up in the thought of conformity eventually loses its ability to express individuality.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury creates a society that is obsessed with happiness. To achieve this happiness, which the people in this society believe is the only thing worth achieving, ignorance is bliss and knowledge is deadly. If they do not know what sadness is, they will never have to experience it. So they burn books. Because, if you don’t have books, people cannot become sad with what is printed in them. But, when you burn books, you also burn the knowledge of happiness. The people in Bradbury’s society don’t know what it means to truly be happy, though it is all they will ever claim to be. Their plates are empty, but they are told to eat. So they eat until they feel full. But, they are full on “noncombustible data” “so full on ‘facts’ they feel stuffed.” This way, they “get a sense of motion without moving.” (Bradbury, 61) They are told that they are happy, with their four walls, their seashells, their “families,” and their never ending supply of colorful pills. They are forced fed the idea that they are happy until the word losses its meaning. If you asked any one person in that society if they are truly happy, they would answer yes without a blink of an eye or a single thought towards the question. But, if you asked them what it means to truly be happy, you would get a blank stare. With the burning of books, they burn the knowledge of happiness. But, they cannot burn every book, because there are those willing to die to protect them, to protect “the magic” “in what books say, how they [stitch] the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” (Bradbury, 83) So, what happens when a forced fed person learns how to pick up a fork and feed themselves? They learn that no, they are not happy after all. And that is what fireman Guy Montag learns when he reads his first book. And his world is turned upside down with each turning of a page, with each book he hides under his pillow and behind a bush. But, he is also learning to see the dew in the morning, to look up at the stars and the man on the moon. To appreciate the warmth of the sun on his face, the relief of a cool breeze in the morning and the beauty of an ever flowing river. He learns to stop and smell the roses, when he used to pass by them so fast they were only a red blur. Before he began to read the books, he forgot that the grass was green and that flowers bloom in the spring. But then he reads, and he begins to remember, to form his own thoughts and opinions about the people in the world around him, to notice everything wrong with the society he lives in. He gains a mentor in Faber, who teaches him of the quality that books hold, the texture of information flowing between happy and sad in their never ending dance across the pages. The fault in the society created by Bradbury is that they tried to eliminate the sad and cling to the happy. But, it is impossible to separate the two, to live with one and forget the other. In order to withstand the sadness, you need the memories of being happy, and the hopes for a happier future. But, you cannot eliminate the sad, or you will never be able to truly know what it means to be blissfully happy.
-Emily McPeak
Although a democratic society is built on the concept of freedom, Ray Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451" illustrates the exploitation of one’s liberty, where humanity’s obliviousness of information and the limiting of choice can defeat what true freedom needs to be. In Bradbury’s novel, the public is told they have freedom, but what the people really possess is only what is given to them, in order to have freedom, one must have access to choice and information. “Not everyone born free and equal… but everyone made equal” (Bradbury 58) explains Captain Beatty, embodying the fact that even a powerful man like Beatty cannot prove that they have freedoms. Moreover, in the beginning of the narrative, Clarisse plays a major role in explaining to Montag why they are not free. Clarisse justifies, “[they] got rid of the front porches because… they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life” (Bradbury 63), a simple freedom, only taken away to lessen the ability to wonder. However, this may be one of the mildest restrictions, a main source of naturally thought-provoking ideas comes from books, which in the corrupt world created by Bradbury, is banned, any book found is “[burned] to ashes” (Bradbury 8), every written word, prohibited; an essential freedom taken away due to a society where few speculate. Furthermore, one of the major forms of corruption in the book, which ultimately leads to display the public’s ignorance, is at the end; when Montag runs away from his death and meets vagrants on the railroad tracks. As he and the travelers sit and watch the chase for Montag on the small television, they see the authorities pick a guiltless person off the street and kill him, “There’s Montag!” (Bradbury 149), the announcer cries, when it rightly wasn’t; a democracy that has turned immoral and crooked, can much else be more unjust than the killing of a faultless man? Through these deficiencies in Fahrenheit 451’s society, many can assume that the freedoms the people have are the very minimum, however, is this restricted world truly fictional or is it gradually becoming part of humanity today?
-Fiona Taddei
Many people consider themselves to be free, but, as displayed in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, people seem to be controlled by social institutions such as the media. In the novel, the media seems to be everything that the people need and more. Even as Montag criticizes the media and the parlor walls, the rest of the city finds them enticing. The parlor walls are a vital symbol throughout the book. To the characters, such as Mildred and her friends, their social lives consist of the parlor. Their social events involve inviting their friends over to watch their “families”. Montag believes that there is more to life then getting wrapped up in these “idiot boxes.” At one of Mildred’s social gatherings, Montag suggests that they discuss politics; to which the women reply “I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest-looking men ever became president…but the man they ran against…kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too much or comb his hair well.” (Bradbury 96-97). The women care more about how the parlor walls present these men then what they are representing. The parlor had a very significant influence on who the public voted for. The right to vote is a freedom in which these women have no value for. As long as their president is an attractive man, they do not care what he does for their country. The programs that are displayed on the parlor walls almost seem to control what the people do and think. The devices among them influence their decisions. The new technology has power over these people. Everyone seems so enthralled by the parlors and their “families” that they are losing touch with the real world. The devices control the people through the media’s opinions and eventually control their ability to think for themselves, stripping them of their freedom. They have devices controlling their lives and making decisions for them. They no longer value those freedoms as individuals that their fore fathers worked diligently to grant them. In Ray Bradbury’s vision of an American democratic society, people are no longer free individuals; they are controlled by selective disclosure of information throughout the media.
-Mia Nelson
Since the beginning of time, writing serves as a tool for self discovery, venting feelings, and the expression of hidden emotions. At the same time, the simplistic idea of words on a page plays a huge role in shaping one’s individuality; however, the world Ray Bradbury creates in the novel “Fahrenheit 451” suggests otherwise. Clarisse McClellan is the first person to defy the nameless society. Untouched by the media, she begins to develop her own sense of personality. Unaccustomed to social conformity, McClellan lives a happier life, enjoying the small things while unscathed by the stronghold society has on its victims.
In the world Guy Montag resides in, books are labeled as a toxin to the population. Instead, society replaces the many ideas suggested in books solely with the matters favored by the masses. This tunnel-vision thinking poses a “Goldilocks” approach: not too hot and not too cold. When people are only introduced to one opinion, there can only be one answer. Better yet, give the population no choice whatsoever, and feed them only what society wants to be exposed. This way, the people never question what is right or wrong. They only see what they can get, and what they can get is the only thing they see. As long as they take the view society spoon-feeds to them, they will learn to be happy and trust the sources.
Captain Beatty is quite comfortable with this state. If “a book is a loaded gun” (68), god forbid a blast of creativity ripples the gray, emotionless community. At the very least this may introduce ideas untouched, and unseen by the innocent eye.
Throughout the novel, Bradbury casts a ubiquitous shadow across the group of society, reluctant to step outside the mold placed in front of them. If one never questions, nor confronts what society offers, they never get the chance to see what good can come out of the challenge.
- Whitney Dee
Fahrenheit 451 depicts a constructivist world whose constructs form from a national opinion that is a lack of opinion. The nation has allowed itself to unify and remove all controversy by, since people are unable to agree on everything, removing all to disagree about. Consequently the people of the society are ignorant; they are taught in facts and feel as though they are thinking while they never further analyze or understand facts in a subjective way- because all that is subjective could actuate arguments. This societal construct is depicted by character Clarisse McCellan who is a young and inquiring woman who is dubbed insane because she does not accept schooling where they “cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.” (Bradbury 61) Moreover, the world in Fahrenheit 451 evolves further when these constructs, which were first just formulated by the society, form into governmental rules to uphold these constructs. The most prominent example of this in the story is the firemen whose job is to burn all books. Books can be, and often are, written with opinion and through their words share their opinions with the world. They teach subjectively and raise questions and arguments about items, acts and ideas. Therefore, under the government’s regulation and oppression of questions and controversy in order to keep a harmonious people, the government banned books so that their nation’s people do not have access to these subjective teachings. The main character of Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, was a firefighter when he was originally unquestioning of his society. However, when Montag experienced perspective outside the society’s constructivist indoctrination –firstly through McCellan, but additionally through books- he fled from the culture in which he was immersed. Montag further strove to attain a comprehension of the world instead of just facts that he was stuffed with. This acquiring of understanding and lack of accord, as exemplified within Montag, is the reason the government banned books. In the world of Fahrenheit 451, the society is enforced by the government into ignorance in the attempt to create nation-wide conformity of the societal truths which are formed by mass consensus.
- Niki Buechel
Throughout the futuristic novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury juxtaposes short-term pleasure and true happiness, and thereby reveals how the two are contradictory states. In a world where most people crave the newest and most advanced forms of technology to keep them “happy”, sincere happiness often evolves in to an illusion and people tend to lose sight of their individuality. One may discover pleasure in money or expensive items, but having pleasure is simply a temporary state of mind. Especially in this modern era, people are more engrossed in their cell phones than in focusing on the world around them. One may feel distraught if a cell phone is lost, or the Internet is down. Dependence and reliance on passive technology can become an addiction, which can most certainly lead to unhappiness and a lack of self-knowledge. Technology separates people from one another, causing a lack of communication, which may lead to loneliness. Bradbury exhibits how pleasure is only temporary through Mildred, who is often pleased by her “family TV”, but attempts to commit suicide because she is unhappy. Human nature craves interaction with other people, but passive technology (as opposed to books) forces one to isolate oneself from the rest of the world. “Pleasure” is clearly illustrated in the opening of the novel; “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 3). Montag is primarily pleased with his occupation as a fireman, but ironically ponders and stumbles over Clarisse’s simple yet sophisticated question, “Are you happy?” (Bradbury 10). By the conclusion of the novel, Montag overcomes the illusion of pleasure and recognizes the value of the struggle for happiness.
-Julia Sullivan
Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, illustrates how the development of Montag’s spectacle society, taken to its extreme, leads to a loss of reality that ultimately causes the downfall of society. Through televised “families” and Seashell radios, spectacle masks reality to the point where people can no longer differentiate between it and reality. In society, individuals such as Mildred live through their television shows, “socializing” with others in the community solely by discussing these shows and other ornamented media that has warped their sense of reality. This lifestyle is taken to an extreme, where reality is frequently mistaken for everyday spectacle. The effect of spectacle on the survival of society displays the utmost importance of recognizing reality. People in Montag’s society take in important information without analyzing it, for the spectacular silver platter on which the news is delivered distracts them from the significance of the information. Bradbury illustrates this to his readers through the character’s dialogue, in which they display ignorance towards the fast approaching and dangerous war. People unwittingly mistake multiple signs of the coming trouble for the everyday spectacle that war is made out to be. Readers grasp the character’s ignorance when Mildred’s friends discuss the war as if it were any other show they watched in their parlor earlier that week. Mrs. Phelps appears unconcerned about her husband’s call to war, saying, “I’ll let old Pete do all the worrying. Not me. I’m not worried,” (Bradbury 94). This quote is just one portrayal of the prevailing unawareness of the reality of war. The women continue to display their ignorance as the conversation continues, “I’ve never known any dead man killed in a war. Killed jumping off buildings, yes… but from wars? No,” (Bradbury 94). They are so distracted by spectacle that not only do they disregard the horror of suicide, but they also have no perception of what war truly is. People are blinded from the grave fate of their society until it is too late to do anything. At the end of the novel, Montag watches the city he once called home explode into dust and rubble, a significant symbol of the ultimate downfall that comes to society as a result of the blinding spectacle that consumes them.
- Nicole Povey
In the novel “Fahrenheit 451”, Ray Bradbury illustrates to his audience that technology can create the illusion that people are socializing with one another when in reality they are merely exchanging superficial thoughts and preconceived ideas. These people do not actively participate in their community; they almost never meet in person, and they don’t spend time sharing ideas, experiences, and feelings. People rarely talk amongst themselves, and when they actually do, their conversations are meaningless and they are solely about what they saw on their “parlor walls”. They always talk about the same things, and everyone always agrees with each other because they all have the same opinion, since they are not exposed to knowledge that can be gained in books. The technology, like the television walls, has them living in an unreal world. Technology dominates the society and it has the people brain washed.
In this compelling novel people believe that reading is a waste of time because in that time, they could be doing other things, and speeding through life. Technology is replacing books and conversations. Beatty explains, “nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending” (Bradbury 54). With this statement, Beatty is explaining that fast paced technology has replaced time consuming reading, thinking, and talking. When Guy Montag meets Clarisse McClellan, who is much different than anyone he has ever met, he starts to question his happiness and the society he lives in. She has read several books, so she has gain a sufficient amount of knowledge to questions things in the world. Other people label Clarisse as strange because she is not very interested in the technology and entertainment. During one of their conversations, Clarisse tells Montag, “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this… But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk... That’s not social at all. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not ” (Bradbury 29). When she says this, she is showing Montag that society is now forcing people not to think on their own. In the novel “Fahrenheit 451”, the “parlor walls” have become the main source of information, entertainment, and social life.
-Elisa Orsini
In the fictitious future created by Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, and in the real world alike, it is unclear which is stronger: humanity's ability to create, or humanity's ability to destroy. Bradbury concludes that creation is stronger. Granger states that "everyone must leave something behind when he dies... a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die" (Bradbury 156). He speaks of everyone living on, just as the authors live on through their books, and their books live on through the ones who read them. He is living in a society based on control through destruction. Montag, along with the other firemen, burn and destroy, in order to keep society happy. Society's own ignorance and need to stay "controlled", and "safe" put itself into a dark age of little to no creation. Here destruction seems to be stronger, but then came a war. A war which was over as soon as it began. Granger concludes the story by explaining the world is like the phoenix. "Every few hundred years[the phoenix] built a pyre, and burnt himself up. ... Every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again, and it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years" (Bradbury 163).
Granger is showing that this war, this destruction, is not destruction at all, but more of a rebirth. A clean slate. No matter how strong destruction seems rebirth will eventually occur, and as long as we have someone remembering, then creation will flourish again. Granger also says "the atom-bomb mushroom from two hundred miles up [is] a pinprick." (Bradbury 157). This great destruction is nothing but a mere dot in the universe. In essence, no grand destruction, or oppression can never wipe out creation. Revolution can not be forgotten for it's something continually learned, not something that is passed down, and with every attempt to control, to restrict creation, to destroy creation, will be destroyed, and replaced with creation.
-Noah Beller
It is interesting how people can be so easily convinced that everything around them is "just fine." If a parent says everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay. If a school teacher says everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay. Finally, and most significantly, if the government says that everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay. Simple as that. People have been brain washed since the beginning of time by those in prominent positions into believing that everything is going to be okay, when in reality, the world we live in is a morbidly messed up place. This message is clearly demonstrated on a much higher scale in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." The demonstration of politicians stepping in front of a camera and putting on a gloomy face in front of the entire nation and stating that the country is in fine shape and that any problems that need to be addressed have been dealt with has and will go on forever. People are so naive. They think, "why shouldn't people believe that? Even if it isn't true, it makes my life much easier to just believe it. It makes things safer." As far as we are concerned, everything that is said on TV is true Imagine living in a world where that is all you know, and that the risk of speaking and thinking freely and having un-censored thoughts brings along the looming threat of death. According to the characters of "Fahrenheit 451," the world the they live in is peachy keen, just because they are told that by over sized pieces of plastic with speakers on their walls. What they are told is what they know, and there is no room for doubt in between. "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something is missing." (Bradbury 82) What is missing from these people is the ability to think freely. What is it that we really have without our in-dependant thoughts? A false sense of reality and important people dictating your life and all of it's decisions. In his novel "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury gets across the message that not everything you hear is true, especially from those in powerful positions, and that free thought and speculation is more than needed in order to maintain a fully functional society.
-Justin Giegerich
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury brings about the question of whether happiness can be achieved through lack of knowledge opposed to individual thought. Bradbury sets up a society without books. There are no books to teach students in school, nor are there books for pleasure. It is hard to imagine the importance of books until the thought of a world where they are forbidden is presented. In Bradbury’s novel, the main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman. The firemen do not extinguish fires, but rather work to start fires on the houses of those that are hiding books. The idea behind the burning of books is to keep people from ever understanding the fear and stress that life with individual thought comes with. However, life without knowledge lacks meaning. Montag realizes this when he is inspired to begin reading after a young girl he meets dies. As he begins reading, he questions what he is doing with his life, and soon his whole world spins out of control. His friend, Faber, says, “They [books] show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam” (Bradbury 83) The good times in life are hard to appreciate when there are no bad times to compare them with. Without differences, opinions, and originality one will always be missing something. Although said bookless society is supposed to keep people happy and stress free, there is still war going on. Eliminating books from the world does nothing to make life more enjoyable. It simply eliminates the vigor and drive from the people in it who will always feel they are missing something. “Knowledge is power” –Sir Francis Bacon
-Devon McCluskey
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury takes place in a future where happiness is achieved through technology such as Jet Cars, "Sea Shells", and third/fourth walls. The world was quite content with these things, and so was Guy Montag. Montag was a fireman, but instead of putting out fires, he started them; burning books and the homes that had stored them. He had never really questioned as to why they burned books, and to him "It was a pleasure to burn" (Bradbury 3). However after him meeting Clarrise Mcclellan, a young woman who is dubbed as an "odd-duck" by society, who tells him of firemen that put out fires, and how people used to just sit and talk on porches. And after watching a woman commit suicide after her books were taken, Montag's perception on happiness began to change. His job of burning books no longer excited him, he realized his "family" was nothing but a television wall, and his secret book stash begins to haunt him. He believes that true happiness must be found in books, or why else would they be burned? As Montag begins to read he questions what is so special about books, as they hadn't affected him at all. He states, "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing" (Bradbury 82). His friend Faber tells him "The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget"(Bradbury 82). True happiness isn't what you can learn from Jet Cars, or Sea Shells, or Walls. It's what you learn from just sitting and talking on porches, or reading a book, or playing a board game. Whats "missing" is living life slowly, and thinking freely; not being pressured by the fast paced technologically advanced world out there.
Sorry I'm late,
-Bennett Piccione
To begin with, i'm very sorry this late. I didn't check the assignments until after this one was already due. I know that's no excuse and that i should still get a zero for this assignment, but i felt i should still hand it in.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, men such as Guy Montag burn books. These Firemen don't out out fires, they start them. These men, working under the authority of the law, destroy knowledge, and reason. The people willingly give up this knowledge. To the people, books are unhappiness. The Firemen come, and they solve the problem. "Burn the book. serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag... Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean." (Bradbury 59-60). The people give up books to give up arguing, and conflicting ideas, but they give up reasoning too. The people give up logical thought, reasoning, a philosophy, and thinking, for peace. When they gove this up they fall in to the illusion. Their heads are filled with facts, data, and stats "because facts of that sort don't change" (Bradbury 61). The people think that they're thinking, and that the books are what caused the arguing when they used to think, actually think. The even believe that everything is fine and peaceful, but he war is evident that this is not the case. The people are bombarded by the media with facts, and lies about what happiness is, while the firemen destroy the unhappy books, and are lulled into a false sense of security, which kills them. Ray Bradbury's novel Shows what can happen to a civilization that wants peace, but stops thinking to achieves it, and the outcome is destruction.
I am so sorry I got this in so late. It had totally slipped my mind and I only checked the website two days ago. I know I probably will get a zero, but I hope I at least got it to you.
Human nature is curious by design. We question the world and whatever exists in it and are constantly searching for answers. But, what if we didn't? What if we were on a need-to-know basis in our society and don't really understand the situations we live in and obey, and are okay with it? That type of somewhat-totalitarian rule is the setting of where Guy Montag, a fireman that burned books and was "driven...by flame" (Bradbury 4) in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; all until he met Clarisse McClellan, a seventeen year old girl who is the pinnacle of curiosity and innocence, who makes Montag finally "stop to think" (Bradbury 8) about the nature and beauty of the world around him. As the story starts out, Montag is blissfully ignorant in his job, taking joy in the burning of the books and doesn't question the motives behind the flame. But, after he encounters Clarisse, he begins to see his world in a new light; Guy starts to wonder about his past with his wife, Mildred; he begins to question the firemen and why they burn books, and even stealing a book from a house before it was burned. This procession shows Guy's revelation of individual thinking from the fast-paced superficial ideas everyone in his country have been 'programmed' to think. Bearing this in mind, Montag can be compared to the Mechanical Hound: they are a weapon that can be programmed and ordered to do, which "doesn't think anything [they] don't want it to think" (Bradbury 27). However, when Montag is introduced to the human nature of asking questions, he becomes living. He breathes, thinks, questions, understands. He takes on a perspective of philosophers and professors, especially those who he encountered while fleeing--the nomadic mercenaries ('Book People') who have committed the rest of their lives to remembering books and maintaining the knowledge humans have acquired. Thus, Bradbury is depicting Montag's transition from mindless drone to a column of human curiosity and nature.
Again, my apologies for the huge delay.
Anna Balto
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, the author suggests that humanity is getting ruined by the amount of power we have; The more power we have the more inhumane we are towards others because we think that they are not as important as us and we treat them like animals. To demonstrate my evidence, on page 78, Captain Beatty says, “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred… Don’t we keep them moving? Don’t we give them fun?” Here it shows how Captain Beatty has power over everyone in the community and says that he can make all of them move and make them have fun and this shows that whatever he says or does is that he has power over all of them. Another example is on page 79 where again Captain Beatty says, “We’ve a record on her family. We’ve watched them carefully…” Here it shows how again he has power over the entire community that they live in but in this quote that I have shown as evidence, he was referring to one person and her family, which is Clarice. He was saying that he had records of the family and that they were watching them carefully which he shows that he has the power of looking over them in a spied way. This is another example of how power is linked in the book. The last example is when Guy Montag says, “There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing” In this quote it shows that books have a very big power over the people in the community. It shows that because a woman in a burning house was not getting out since she was with the books in the building. The book must have had a power over her that kept her in a burning building and that eventually killed her. As a conclusion, as it is mentioned in my thesis statement, the more power someone has the more inhumane we are.
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