Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Technology wants to destroy society. Members of Fahrenheit 451’s futuristic society have an obsession with large television screens and desire to own impressive, appealing TV parlors. In this dystopian future, the totalitarian government uses technology to suppress feeling and thinking. Technology replaces human nature; the people rely on some machines to take care of work for them technology surrounds them. Fahrenheit 451, by Bradbury, illustrates how an immense influence of mass media and technology eliminate social interaction, creates despair and false happiness among each individual, and breaks apart families.

In the dystopian future of Fahrenheit 451, technology replaces social interaction and distracts people from real human thoughts, thus controlling them in a form of totalitarian government. The government seizes the mass media through advertising and changing people’s opinions, as shown when Montag rides on a public train car: “The people who had been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice” (79). A commercial distracts Montag while he reads a book on the train. Montag gets incredibly agitated; the commercial overwhelms him enough to enact a state of submission. He flips out and startles other passengers in the car. The government brainwashes people, not with a toothpaste advertisement, but with advertisement and commercial exploitation in general. Just alike, technology in Fahrenheit 451 allures people into wanting to be part of the mass media. Faber...

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...is wrong “’Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read’” (82). Montag tries to understand how the government uses technology to make people happy.

Technology and the mass media annihilate communication in society; it makes people feel happy, and it takes away family values. Technology serves as a distraction between human interactions. It tries to create happiness, but it never quite succeeds. It tears families apart and leaves everyone as a lonely individual. Technology will take control over all humanity if we do not do something now.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1991. Print