“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches” (Wikiquote, “Ray Bradbury”). Author Ray Bradbury made this observation in 1979 and his thought has only become more true as time has gone on. Bradbury warns of the possibility of this happening in his novel, Fahrenheit 451. The message of Fahrenheit 451 is more important than ever because today’s book editors, movie critics, and plays have intentionally and unintentionally removed Bradbury’s original intent of the novel. This hasn’t only happened to Fahrenheit 451, but many other books have been dumbed down to meet the standards of today’s unsophisticated readers.
When Fahrenheit 451 came out in 1953, Bradbury had created a new world that readers at the time viewed as profound and alarming. Readers felt this way because prior to Bradbury’s novel, they hadn’t read anything that showed what life would be like without books. “The written word supports objectivity, criticism, and analysis: it enlarges and depends awareness and thus supports the civic order of modern republics, as they came to be at the end of the Nineteenth century” (Bertonneau). Before World War II, American citizens were much less influenced by things such as television and radio (McGiveron). Instead, they gathered information from books and newspapers. Fahrenheit 451 was able to be so influential because it made citizens realize how important books truly in the development of society. “Words provoke imagination and foster independence from stock images” (Bertonneau).
As time has progressed, the general public has moved from its traditionalistic views of the early 1900’s and become more narrow-minded. “It is easy to see why the book was warmly received w...
... middle of paper ...
...from some awkward transitions, abrupt endings of scenes that do not flow into the next one, and some scenes that seem extraneous” (Murasaki).
After so many years have passed since Fahrenheit 451’s release, it’s sad to see how individuals have tried to change it and how underappreciated Ray Bradbury’s work has become. It’s clear to see that Bradbury’s idea of a world without books is slowly becoming more true as readers, moviegoers, and playgoers continue to want information handed to them as quickly and easily as possible. One has to wonder whether or not Bradbury’s vision will one day come true as individuals place more value on instant gratification and less on taking the time to learn and fully comprehend the many lessons that books have the power to teach.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2013.
Imagine a world where you could not read or own any books. How would you feel if you had someone burn your house because you have books hidden within the walls? One of the most prevalent themes in Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 is the idea of censorship. In Bradbury's fictional world, owning books is illegal. A fireman's job is not putting out fires like one may assume. In Fahrenheit 451, a fireman has the job of starting fires. Firefighters start fires in homes containing books. If this were reality, there would be no homes to live in. Books have become an integral part of American life. However, the theme of censorship is still relevant in American life.
Few books exemplify the consequences of misconceptions more than Farenheit 451. The book speaks of a world in which in citizens think they are living in a utopia, when in fact their world is constantly devoloving into a place where no human could ever flourish. This delusion along with the misconception that books are thing to be feared is the precise reason that the general populace is so easily controlled. The reason behind the propaganda campaign against books is so the people do not realize that their lives are unsatisfying and dull. In other words, this, misconception propagated by the governing force, fuels the illusion of a perfect world. The myth that the world...
Imagine a world in which there are no books, and every piece of information you learn comes from a screen. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, this nightmare is a reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman who instead of putting out fires burns books. He eventually meets Clarisse who changes his outlook on life and inspires him to read books (which are outlawed). This leads to Guy being forced on the run from the government. The culture, themes, and characters in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 construct a dystopian future that is terrifying to readers.
Fahrenheit 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper, more specifically books, burn. As a fireman living in a futuristic city, it is Guy Montag’s job to see that that is exactly what happens. Ray Bradbury predicts in his novel Fahrenheit 451 that the future is without literature -- everything from newspapers to novels to the Bible. Anyone caught with books hidden in their home is forced out of it while the firemen force their way in. Then, the firemen turned the house into an inferno.
Perseverance pushes people towards what they believe in, a person’s perseverance is determined upon their beliefs. A person with strong beliefs will succeed greater to someone who does not. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag perseveres against society as well as himself in order to demolish censorship. Perseverance embraces values and drives people closer to their goals.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by author Ray Bradbury we are taken into a place of the future where books have become outlawed, technology is at its prime, life is fast, and human interaction is scarce. The novel is seen through the eyes of middle aged man Guy Montag. A firefighter, Ray Bradbury portrays the common firefighter as a personal who creates the fire rather than extinguishing them in order to accomplish the complete annihilation of books. Throughout the book we get to understand that Montag is a fire hungry man that takes pleasure in the destruction of books. It’s not until interacting with three individuals that open Montag’s eyes helping him realize the errors of his ways. Leading Montag to change his opinion about books, and more over to a new direction in life with a mission to preserve and bring back the life once sought out in books. These three individual characters Clarisse McClellan, Faber, and Granger transformed Montag through the methods of questioning, revealing, and teaching.
Imagine a society where owning books is illegal, and the penalty for their possession—to watch them combust into ashes. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, illustrates just such a society. Bradbury wrote his science fiction in 1951 depicting a society of modern age with technology abundant in this day and age—even though such technology was unheard of in his day. Electronics such as headphones, wall-sized television sets, and automatic doors were all a significant part of Bradbury’s description of humanity. Human life styles were also predicted; the book described incredibly fast transportation, people spending countless hours watching television and listening to music, and the minimal interaction people had with one another. Comparing those traits with today’s world, many similarities emerge. Due to handheld devices, communication has transitioned to texting instead of face-to-face conversations. As customary of countless dystopian novels, Fahrenheit 451 conveys numerous correlations between society today and the fictional society within the book.
Throughout Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses his world to show what books provide that society can not offer; knowledge. Knowledge then guides people out of the ignorance and conformity that the society in Fahrenheit 451 encourages and even demands as the majority. The fear of any discomfort that knowledge might bring is the cause for the society’s actions in trying to eliminate it; however, because they never take time to look past the discomfort and see the happiness that knowledge does provide, they stay in their ignorance and experience their false happiness. Therefore, knowledge is what brings people out of ignorance and into the light where they may be able to find true happiness for themselves.
To start, the novel Fahrenheit 451 describes the fictional futuristic world in which our main protagonist Guy Montag resides. Montag is a fireman, but not your typical fireman. In fact, firemen we see in our society are the ones, who risk their lives trying to extinguish fires; however, in the novel firemen are not such individuals, what our society think of firemen is unheard of by the citizens of this futuristic American country. Instead firemen burn books. They erase knowledge. They obliterate the books of thinkers, dreamers, and storytellers. They destroy books that often describe the deepest thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Great works such as Shakespeare and Plato, for example, are illegal and firemen work to eradicate them. In the society where Guy Montag lives, knowledge is erased and replaced with ignorance. This society also resembles our world, a world where ignorance is promoted, and should not be replacing knowledge. This novel was written by Ray Bradbury, He wrote other novels such as the Martian chronicles, the illustrated man, Dandelion wine, and something wicked this way comes, as well as hundreds of short stories, he also wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV. In this essay three arguments will be made to prove this point. First the government use firemen to get rid of books because they are afraid people will rebel, they use preventative measures like censorship to hide from the public the truth, the government promotes ignorance to make it easier for them to control their citizens. Because the government makes books illegal, they make people suppress feelings and also makes them miserable without them knowing.
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
Fahrenheit 451’s Relevance to Today Fahrenheit 451’s relevance to today can be very detailed and prophetic when we take a deep look into our American society. Although we are not living in a communist setting with extreme war waging on, we have gained technologies similar to the ones Bradbury spoke of in Fahrenheit 451 and a stubborn civilization that holds an absence of the little things we should enjoy. Bradbury sees the future of America as a dystopia, yet we still hold problematic issues without the title of disaster, as it is well hidden under our democracy today. Fahrenheit 451 is much like our world today, which includes television, the loss of free speech, and the loss of the education and use of books. Patai explains that Bradbury saw that people would soon be controlled by the television and saw it as the creators chance to “replace lived experience” (Patai 2).
Bradbury, who had grown up with books as a child, uses the plot of Fahrenheit 451 to represent how literature is simply being reduced. He focuses on the contrast between a world of books and a world of televisions. According to the article “Fahrenheit 451,” from the first days of television in the 1950’s, when all Americans scrambled to have one in their home, “watching television has competed with reading books” (148). Edward Eller suggests another reason for the rich use of technology in Fahrenheit 451: in WWII, just before the publishing of the novel, “technological innovations allowed these fascist states to more effectively destroy the books they did not find agreeable and produce new forms of communication implanted with state-sanctioned ideas” (Eller 150). The idea of written fiction being replaced by large televisions evidently seemed logical at the time.
Henry David Thoreau, a famous American author, once said that “What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” Essentially, Thoreau believed that even though most individual people are tolerable, society as a whole is not. Ray Bradbury reflects upon Thoreau’s ideas in his novel entitled Fahrenheit 451. In the novel, Guy Montag, the protagonist, realizes that his supposed utopia society is actually a dystopia. Montag finally realizes this when Clarisse, his young neighbor, asks him if he is happy. Although, Montag believes that he is happy, it becomes clear later in the novel that he is not. Montag finds countless faults in the society he lives in. Throughout the novel, Bradbury’s goal is to show the reader some faults in the world today, such as our education system and the effects of technology on lives.
Physical, emotional and mental abuse is affected by the entire body. Physical is the outside, mental is the inside, and emotional is even deeper on the inside of the body. The people in this new world deal with this abuse every day. It has become a severe tragedy of what the future might become.
“It was a pleasure to burn” Bradbury (1) Is the first line of Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451, the line itself is thought by the book's main protagonist Guy Montag. Although from that line alone he wound not exactly seem like the ideal protagonist of a science fiction novel. Throughout the story Montag has some life altering experiences that change him; he starts out as a fireman (the kind that burn books, as opposed to saving lives) and ends up belonging to group of intellectuals who memorize books in order to someday write them down again. Ever since he met a young girl named Clarisse he had been consumed with thoughts, thoughts of what things looked like, thoughts of what things smelled like and even thoughts of why things were the way they are. Guy Montag goes through many changes in a fairly brief period in the story. Throughout his journey he has three mentors: Clarisse, Faber and Granger. Clarisse is the first, the one who opens Montag’s eyes to the world around him, Faber gives him wisdom and helps him shape what he is now thinking and feeling, and Granger helps him establish his own identity.