Television is very popular in our society. But, what makes television so beloved? Is it the actors and actresses, the suspense, the quality, the humor, or the romance? While many of these aspects connect to why television is popular, the main reason is that watching television helps avoid problems, and gives a momentary happiness. These aspects are present in the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, where in their society books are banned and television is overpowering. The author Ray Bradbury uses characterization and figurative language to demonstrate when happiness is forced, people become ignorant with their emotions. People believe they’re happy, but are pretending and shows that their fake happiness is a disguise to unhappiness.
Throughout
When Clarisse asks Montag a question right before she leaves from their first meet, she asks, “‘Are you happy?’ she said. ‘Am I what?’ he cried. But she was gone. (...) [Montag later asks himself] ‘Happy! Of all the nonsense,’ he stopped laughing” (10). Clarisse questions Montag’s happiness because she believes that Montag is different than other people in society, (23) but notices he still has an superficial happiness like the rest of the citizens. Asking Montag if he’s happy caused Montag to realize he’s not happy, and changed his perspective of happiness. In addition, when Montag recites a section of Dover Beach to Mildred’s friends, Bradbury describes, “Mrs. Phelps was crying. The others(...) watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape. They sat, not touching her, bewildered with her display. She sobbed uncontrollably. Montag himself was stunned and shaken” (101). Mrs. Phelps starts crying because of Dover Beach referring to a war, which her husband is in during that section of the novel. The part of Dover Beach that Montag read displayed ignorance of love and happiness, which affected Mrs. Phelps because of not truly knowing what happiness and being in love feels like. This goes to show that when a book, or person questions
When Montag goes to his house after meeting Clarisse, Bradbury states, “He (Montag) felt his smile slid away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy” (12). Bradbury uses a burning candle to compare it with Montag’s happiness. His happiness is going away, and finally “blows out.” This demonstrates that since Montag’s happiness is fake, he realizes he’s unhappy. The reason why Montag finds this out and not others in the society is because he does not spend his time watching television all day. When Montag discovers his problems instead of ignoring it, his fake happiness leads to unhappiness. Adding on to the previous quote, Bradbury writes, “He was not happy… he wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (12). After Clarisse asking him if he’s happy, Montag becomes aware of his superficial happiness. Montag wears his happiness as a mask, and when Clarisse takes his fake happiness away, Montag becomes unhappy and can not get his happiness back. Therefore, superficial happiness results in
Montag is realizing wrong his world really is. He wants to change it too. He says “ Im going to do something, I dont know what yet but im going t do something big.” He doesnt know what to do yet because at this point he hasnt figured out the “missing peice”. Montag says “ I dont know. we have everything we need to be happy, but we arent happy. Something is missing.” then he starts to understand that books are the key to knowladge and knowledge is what they need. he says “There must be something in books that we cant imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there, you dont stay for nothing.” And this is the turning point of the book because now montag is ready to take
At first Montag is unaware of the true nature of his surroundings and feelings. “‘Bet i know something else you don't. There's dew on the grass in the morning.’ Montag suddenly couldn't remember if he’d known that or not, and it made him quite irritable.” (Bradbury, 7). The conversation serves to highlight his willful ignorance, the amount of things he simply never thought to realize, that existed just under his radar.
Then she asks “Are you happy?”(14) Clarisse runs away into the moonlight, leaving Montag to question himself. Clarisse’s question depicts Montag having lost himself because he questions himself whether this job that he has grants him happiness.
Montag enjoys reading books but also he likes to destroy them. "It was a pleasure to burn" (Bradbury 1"). This evidence shows a contradiction in his interests. Ray Bradbury has pointed out how ironic this is. "Guy Montag joyously goes about his job of burning down a house found to contain books, and Bradbury describes Montag's hands with majestic irony" (Mcgiveron 1). Here we see his obvious conflict of interests. Montag does not realize what he is doing at first. Early in the story Montag does not yet recognize the true destruction of his profession. (Explicitor 1). It takes awhile for him to realize what he is doing. Montag has some major conflict of interests. In the 1950's Ray Bradbury the novel Fahrenheit 451 which pointed out his views about on censorship his views are still effectively received today. His story shows a society obsessed with technology, which is not all that different to present day's society. His choice to include a variety of literary techniques to help the reader grasp the novels true meanings. Bradbury used techniques such as situational irony, dynamic characterization, Character motivation, censorship, and symbolism to convey his story effectively. Next we see Bradbury challenges us to think critically about what everything
Bradbury’s main character Montag’s becomes confused, and starts questioning his entire life and beliefs and all these questions start when Bradbury introduces Clarisse the energetic and curious seventeen year old girl. When coming across Montag the first time while he was walking home, she asked him a most puzzling question, “Are you happy?” and walks away without waiting for an answer (Bradbury 10). He dwells on that question at first thinking it was a silly question. This is when he begins questioning his happiness and comes to the realization that he is in fact not happy, but he cannot figure out why. Perhaps he thinks that he has to be happy, he has a good job and a house
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).
Within the many layers of Montag lay several opposite sides. For example, Montag is a fireman who burns books for a living but at home, spends time reading novels, poetry, and other written material. Although Montag could be called a hypocrite, he does not enjoy both the reading and the burning at the same time; he goes through a change that causes him to love books. Humans have the power to change and grow from one extreme to another, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In addition, when Mildred is with Montag, Montag does not have feelings for her but thinks of her as she is killed by the bombs. He possesses both the knowledge that Mildred does not love him and the heart that truly cares, but he knows not how to deal with this. His feelings are oppressed; it takes a major event (the bomb) to jolt them from hibernation.
“Behind his mask of conformity, Montag gradually undergoes a change of values. Montag realized his life had been meaningless without books” (Liukkonen). In the beginning of the novel, Montag said, “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 3). For most of his life, Montag conformed just like the other members of society. He set things on fire because it was his job and did not question whether or not it was the right thing to do. Throughout the story, however, he grew to find and voice his own opinions and resisted the conformity that his society stressed. When Montag had to decide whether or not to burn Beatty to death, he proved himself by not giving in to what was expected. He killed the captain of the police department, which was an entirely defiant act (Bradbury
The first event that results in Montag becoming a dynamic character is his conversations with Clarisse McClellan. She is seventeen, and people consider her insane and anti-social. She is considered anti-social, because she is talkative and expressive. In Bradbury’s made up world, the meaning of social is staring at the parlor walls (large TV screens), and having no thought at all. Clarisse is very different from the rest: “I rarely watch the ‘parlor walls’ or go to races or Fun Parks. So I’ve lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know that once the billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they even had to stretch the advertising out so it would last” (pg.7).Clarisse’s enthusiastic and cheerful disposition lightens Montag’s attitude, making him a more optimistic person. He is not so closed-minded anymore, and he learns to be himself, and sometimes care free. Montag learns to see the brighter side of things and believe in him...
Montag is influenced by Clarisse a lot. And, her impact on him is tremendous. She questions his whole life, teaches him to appreciate the simple things, and to care about other people and their feelings. “You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive..”(Bradbury 23) Through all Clarisse's questioning, Montag knows that she is trying to help him. Because of her help and impact on him, Montag is changed forever.
Are you really happy? Or are you sad about something? Sad about life or money, or your job? Any of these things you can be sad of. Most likely you feel discontentment a few times a day and you still call yourself happy. These are the questions that Guy Montag asks himself in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this book people are thinking they are happy with their lives. This is only because life is going so fast that they think they are but really there is things to be sad about. Montag has finally met Clarisse, the one person in his society that stops to smell the roses still. She is the one that gets him thinking about how his life really is sad and he was just moving too fast to see it. He realizes that he is sad about pretty much everything in his life and that the government tries to trick the people by listening to the parlor and the seashells. This is just to distract people from actual emotions. People are always in a hurry. They have 200 foot billboards for people driving because they are driving so fast that they need more time to see the advertisement. Now I am going to show you who are happy and not happy in the book and how our society today is also unhappy.
When Montag meets Clarisse, his neighbor, he starts to notice that there is more to life than burning books. Montag states, “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I have used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of those books” (Bradbury 49). It begins to bother Montag that all he has done for the past years is burn books. He starts to rethink his whole life, and how he has been living it. Montag goes on to say, “It took some men a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! It is all over” (Bradbury 49) Before, Montag never cares about what he has been doing to the books, but when he begins to ignore the distractions and really think about life he starts to notice that he has been destroying some other mans work. Montag begins to think more of the world
“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.
In the mid-1900s, the Unites States was rapidly changing from the introduction of a new standard of technology. The television had become the dominant form of entertainment. This seemingly simple thing quickly impacted the average American’s lifestyle and culture by creating new standards for the average household. New, intimidating concepts came about, and they began embedding themselves into American culture. It became clear to some people that some of these ideas could give rise to new social problems, which it did. Sixty- five years ago, in a library basement, a man named Ray Bradbury wrote a book called Fahrenheit 451, which was able to accurately predict social problems that would occur because he saw that Americans are addicted to gaining quick rewards and new technology, and also obsessed with wanting to feel content with their lives.
Of all characters, Bradbury uses Mildred Montag to effectively portray the idea that the majority of society has taken happiness as a refuge in nothing but passive, addictive entertainment. She immediately reveals her character early in the book, by saying, “My family is people. They tell me things: I laugh. They laugh! And the colors!” (73). Mildred is describing her parlors, or gigantic wall televisions, in this quote. Visual technological entertainment is so important in her life that she refers them to as “family,” implying the television characters as her loved ones. By immersing herself in an imaginary world, Mildred finds herself able to relate to fake characters and plots, giving her a phony sense of security. This is necessary for her to achieve her shallow happiness, or senseless plain fun, as she lifelessly watches other people in her walls with a senseless mind. Her family in real life only consists of Guy Montag, her husband, whom she has no fond feelings about. Montag is so frustrated with Mildred because of her inability to express feelings for ...