Fahrenheit 451 Individuality Analysis

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a novel based on a dystopian society. The way society copes with the government is through conformity. Conformity is an act of matching attitudes and beliefs. Many of the characters like Mildred, Beatty, and the rest conform to the government because it is the way this culture lives. Individuality is not accepted in this society because it causes conflicts with one another. The government demolishes any kind of individuality one has, and does not tolerate with any kind of knowledge because they will find a way to punish an individual. Individuality expresses the differences of a person, it create a unique personality of one self like Clarisse McClellan showed Montag in the beginning of the story. Clarisse
When society has individuality there is a say in what they feel about certain aspects of life, whether it is good or bad. Clarisse McClellan is a great example of individuality she shows in the novel. She “liked to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking and watching the sun rise” (Bradbury 5). Her curiosity and questioning made her different than the others, thinking was her specialty and Montag saw her as strange. While she talks to Montag she tells him “You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me”, she saw something in Montag that showed how he was willing to be like her, different (Bradbury 21). Her character is peaceful; she doesn’t like violence or TV like the others. She’s able to ask questions to Montag about his job, “How long’ve you worked at being a fireman?” (Bradbury 5). Montag then develops a sense of individuality and curiosity of what she has to say. She does not try to convince Montag to think the way she thinks, instead Clarisse shows him that thinking out side the box can be an option for him to chose, not knowing that she has pushed him towards a new decision. Clarisse is a great influence towards Montag’s
In this society everyone lives off conformity. Montag cannot see what other readers see when they read because he is anesthetized to life (Smolla). Conformity hinders the rights of society, everything is done similar and certain actions cannot be different than what the government of this novel says. Conformity also restricts the ideas of society to be heard because everyone must follow the same ideology. One of the quotes of Beatty “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred”, implying that people are better off conforming to the culture so that unhappiness does not happen (Bradbury 56). In Fahrenheit 451 conformity is the motto of the culture, society is distracted with certain simple things like TV and racing car. Clarisse explains to Montag “People don’t talk about anything… they all say the same thing and nobody says anything different from anyone else”, the culture of this society couldn’t question certain things and most of their conversations lead to the same basic ideas. (Bradbury 28). At the beginning of the book Clarisse asked Montag if he has ever read the books he has burned, he knows he is not able to because he will be going “ against the law” and cause a conflict towards that action (Bradbury 5). Clarisse only appears in the beginning of the book because her individuality gets in the way of the government and