Similarities Between Fahrenheit 451 And Into The Wild

Happiness: an idea so abstract and intangible that it requires one usually a lifetime to discover. Many quantify happiness to their monetary wealth, their materialistic empire, or time spent in relationships. However, others qualify happiness as a humble campaign to escape the squalor and dilapidation of oppressive societies, to educate oneself on the anatomy of the human soul, and to locate oneself in a world where being happy dissolves from a number to spiritual existence. Correspondingly, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Krakauer’s Into the Wild illuminate the struggles of contentment through protagonists which venture against norms in their dystopian or dissatisfying societies to find the virtuous refuge of happiness. Manifestly, societal

Afflicted by his father’s familial neglect due to his dual marriages, Chris opted to “express his rage obliquely, in silence and sullen withdrawal” (Krakauer 123). Ostensibly, Chris’ decision to turn to a life of adventurous isolationism was stimulated by the periodic absence of his father as he divided his love, loyalty, and charity between two households. Thus, being never regarded as a priority and being exposed to a perplexing hierarchy of siblings, half-siblings, parents, and parental lovers, Chris’ taciturn retreat to the remote Alaskan wilderness substituted the confusion, tension, and neglect of home with simplicity, independence, and pacifism. Coincidingly, after Montag’s exodus from the authorities and a brief reminisce of his past life and lover, Mildred, Montag “[doesn’t] miss her” and “[doesn’t] feel much of anything” regarding his wife (Bradbury 148). Always unsatisfied after his enlightenment, Montag has countlessly tried to fill his deepening void with philosophy, poems, and literature. Looking to the past, Montag can accredit that his cleft of deprivation can be credited to his inert, robotic wife who failed to support him through his metamorphosis. Additively, Bradbury, through the portrayal of Mildred, exemplifies how mass mechanization and globalization can enslave the creativity of a human mind and stultify the primitive human functions of conversing,

Annoyed by the affluent privileged at his university, McCandless’ “outrage over injustice in the world” caused him to “[press] social issues such as racism and world hunger” while his default peers spent time selfishly indulging in themselves (Krakauer 123). Clearly, Chris’ progressive and peripheral infuriation at society’s self-centrism and sheer ignorance may have contributed in his radical evacuation to the Alaskan wilderness to imitate the suffering and anguish that tens of millions in third-world countries experience daily. Likewise, Chris’ premature maturity to take interest in such domestic and foreign affairs continues to stimulate the archetype of his incompatibility with the society he resides with. Concurringly, Montag’s maturing realization of his dystopian environment provokes him to question why “the world is starving, but we’re well-fed” and how “the world works hard and we play” (Bradbury 69). After being edified by Clarisse, Montag begins to process how his privileged, advanced community has become addicted to entertainment and narcissistic captivation, that it has lost all empathy and concern to the greater world. Therefore, Montag disenfranchises from his society and pursuits literary intellect which strives to address the problems of the world in contrast to exploiting the problems of the