Social Commentary in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

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Albert Einstein once said “…Imagination is more important than knowledge…” but what if people lived in a world that restrained them from obtaining both knowledge and imagination. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the main character, Montag, expresses his emotions by showing the importance of social values. Throughout the novel, the secretive ways of a powerful force are exploited, the book also shows the faults in a new technological world, and the author shows the naïve way an average citizen in a dystopian society thinks. As the novel begins to unfold, Bradbury displays an act of rebellion starting to rise, shown throughout some of the characters feelings. Clarisse, a young and free spirited teenager is an example of the new kind of spontaneous personality not ordinary but is becoming more popular. When Clarisse is first introduced in the novel she is intrigued by Montag. As the author points out, “She seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix disc on his chest” (Bradbury 6), we can see that this affected Clarisse deeply. Both of those symbols represe...

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