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The effects of technology in our society
Fahrenheit 451 analytical essay
The effects of technology in our society
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“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” (Ray Bradbury) Fahrenheit 451 is about books that are outlawed and burned. Bradbury said he wrote this book because of his concerns about burning books in the United States. In Fahrenheit 451, it is illegal owning and reading books. The members of the society focus on entertainment and getting through life quickly. For instance “it grows you any shape it wishes. It is an enviroment as real as the world, it becomes and is the truth." If books are found they are burned and the person who owns them is arrested. They say "you know the law, 'said Beatty' wheres your common sense?" Warning people about the dangers of books in their society. If the owner refuses to give up the books like the older woman, they are offten killed, burning with th books. Montag the main character from the book witnesses a woman die and burn than leave her books. “Her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall, as if they had strock her.” he says. Specifically people that have interest outside of technology and entertainment are seen as strange or a threat to the society in witch they live in. …show more content…
Fahrenheit 451 is very futuristic, firemen start fires rather than put them out like they do in our world today. As the story goes on Montags wife Mildred refers to the televison being her "family" when he ask her to turn it off. For intance they watch an extreme amount of TV on screens that fill up the whole wall. People stopped reading books and caring over time as the culture around them changed. And the "parlor walls" was all they wanted and needed to be entertained. In this society people do not think idependently or have actual conversations. Nor do they have interest in reading
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.
“Remember when we had to actually do things back in 2015, when people barely had technology and everyday life was so difficult and different? When people read and thought and had passions, dreams, loves, and happiness?” This is what the people of the book Fahrenheit 451 were thinking, well that is if they thought at all or even remembered what life used to be like before society was changed.
Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a very hostile environment. The world is ridden with wars. In fact, according to the book, there had already been two atomic wars and a war in the process. There were ten million soldiers deployed but the media lied and said only one million were sent out. Also, they live in an age of ignorance. They burn books to keep them from learning things and would rather lie to them than risk having them get upset. Family and religion has been replaced with television. A yearly salary was reduced to a mere $6,000. This shows that the value of the money decreased.
In Federalist 10 James Madison argued that while factions are inevitable, they might have interests adverse to the rights of other citizens. Madison’s solution was the implementation of a Democratic form of government. He felt that majority rule would not eliminate factions, but it would not allow them to be as powerful as they were. With majority rule this would force all parties affiliate and all social classes from the rich white to the poor minorities to work together and for everyone’s opinion and views to be heard.
More importantly, Fahrenheit 451 has an anti-apathy, anti-dependence, and anti-television message. People in this novel are afraid of themselves. They fear the thought of knowing, which leads them to depend on others to think for them. Since they are not thinking for themselves, they need something to occupy their time. This is where television comes in. Television, in turn, leads to whole host of problems: violence, depression, and even suicide.
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.
Often, dystopian novels are written by an author to convey a world that doesn’t exist, but criticizes aspects of the present that could lead to this future. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1951 but discusses issues that have only increased over time. The encompassing issue that leads to the dystopic nature of this novel is censorship of books. The government creates a world in which it is illegal to have any books. Firemen are enforcers of this law by being the ones to burn the books and burn the buildings where the books were found. By censoring the knowledge found in books, the government attempts to rid the society of corruption caused by “the lies” books are filled with in hopes the people will never question. In Fahrenheit 451, censorship is a paradox.
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.
The “parlor walls,” mentioned in Fahrenheit 451, are much like the televisions that we have today. We have televisions in a range of sizes which are becoming closer to the size of a wall. Households nowadays hold up to a number of televisions, particularly in bedrooms, living rooms, and sometimes even kitchens. Towards the ending of Fahrenheit 451, Montag is being broadcasted across the parlor walls after his killing of Captain Beatty. The people broadcasting the turn of events made up a story at the end in order to keep their public calm after they lost track of Montag. Televisions have reality shows that are dramatized and unimaginative. Television even broadcasts television series and movies with graphic detailing in wars and fights. Bradbury was not attracted to the television as others were because he believed the
The book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury tells the tale of a future society which outlaws books. This book has a lot of symbolism and the symbols used in the text help support what the purpose of the book is, being to avoid conformity and not to let society become uniform. This book fights for individuality and shows just how important that is by displaying the consequences of destroying this characteristic.
Everyone has a different opinion, and because of this the society in Fahrenheit 451 is so judgemental. Sense so many people have different opinions it causes conflict, and this is why books are burned, to not offend people who may have a negative opinion or input to a certain book. Beatty says “ Colored people dont like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it…” Beatty is saying that when one person or a group of people don't like a certain book it offends them, so all books must be burned. This shows what the society has come down to, no one gets to explore and expand their mind by reading new and exciting things, no one gets to read at all. Maybe if there were books for people to read, their minds wouldn't be glued to technology, and people wouldn't be so
The North Korean government is known as authoritarian socialist; one-man dictatorship. North Korea could be considered a start of a dystopia. Dystopia is a community or society where people are unhappy and usually not treated fairly. This relates how Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 shows the readers how a lost of connections with people and think for themselves can lead to a corrupt and violent society known as a dystopia.
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.
Fahrenheit 451 is about a fire man named Guy Montag, who 's job is not to put out fires but to set them. The Novel is about a city that books are band from and news papers are dead and the only media they are allowed is tv. The reason why books are illegal is because books contain knowledge, and thats something that the city doesn 't want them to have. Guy Montag’s job was to set every book he saw on fire, every house that contained the books, and anyone who lived among those books. Humanity was already destroyed by then and none of the people that lived in the city had any recognition of what was going on because no one knew that kind of knowledge. Along with the burning books, nature and real connections with other people have pretty much been shut out, and the result? A society that is now blind by it’s own ignorance and is being destroyed by it without anyone even
The Majority of people today believe that the society in Fahrenheit 451 is far-fetched and could never actually happen, little do they know that it is a reflection of the society we currently live in. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 books are burnt due to people's lack of interest in them and the fire is started by firemen. Social interactions is at an all time low and most time is spent in front of the television being brainwashed by advertisements. In an attempt to make us all aware of our faults, Bradbury imagines a society that is a parallel to the world we live in today by emphasizing the decline in literature, loss of ethics in advertisement, and negative effects of materialism.