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

assimilation, familial antagonism, and communal ethnocentrism all catalyze one’s ordained crusade to pursuit the empirical element of happiness.
One commonality both protagonists share is that of their natural or influenced inclination to reject societal assimilation in gamble for happiness. Chris McCandless explains that people are too “conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism,” and though such conditions are comforting, a “secure future” is “damaging to the adventurous spirit” (Krakauer 57). Evidently, people today are too cowardice to interrupt the stability and economic construction of their lives in exchange for an unsecure and wagered life of exploration, adventure, and liberty. Moreover, Krakauer also illustrates how today’s mass technology and perpetual advancement has structured modern society that its inhabitants are forced to compete and work eternally to secure a future rather take the time to escape the grime of life and live in the primal sense of adventure. Congruently, the continual effort for societies to assimilate and utopianize through “[technology], mass exploitation” and alleviating “minority pressure” so the populous “can stay happy all the time” proves detrimental to the liberties of expressionism and individuality (Bradbury 57). Beatty’s views on suppression of controversy creates a distinct dichotomy between himself and Montag, exponent for literary expressionism, thus romanticizing Montag’s struggle as a holy war. Furthermore, Bradbury warns that societies that strive to integrate to utopian parameters by eliminating all prejudices and sensitivities are instrumental in attacking creativity, individuality, and prompting dystopian tyranny.
Next, familial animosity and discontentment may pose an impetus in one’s odyssey for happiness.

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,

feeling, and living. I, too, can relate in seeking joyous refuge due to familial tensions. Whenever my parents used to verbally berate each other, I would flee downstairs to the basement until the conflict subsided. Unlike the vulgar, oppressive upstairs, the basement was welcoming, vast, and remote. Though the basement was a matter of stairs from the chaotic drama, it felt galaxies away.
Irrefutably, in some instances, luxuries and materialistic opulence can pose to be direct obstacles in one’s nirvanic struggle.

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

world.