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Fahrenheit 451 society compared to our society
Ignorance of happiness in fahrenheit 451
Ignorance of happiness in fahrenheit 451
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Saying someone is happy isn’t the same as being happy. In Fahrenheit 451, the citizens in society believe in the idea of being happy, being content, and not thinking about what’s going on around them. The mere thought of always staying busy and consuming their lives with television is what they live by. In Brave New World, citizens also presume the idea of happiness and the concept of conditioning to know their true value in life. Happiness comes in the form of a pill, where society takes it to get rid of unwanted thoughts, to be free and careless. The governments in Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World both control their citizens as a way to manipulate their behaviors and actions. With happiness, also comes the notion of love. Both societies …show more content…
They are so accustomed to living in a controlled world, that they don’t realize their true identities are gone. In Brave New World, their society’s illusion and distractions of happiness comes from a pill known as soma. “Soma provides a mindless, inauthentic "imbecile happiness" - a vacuous escapism which makes people comfortable with their lack of freedom” (Pearce). All of the citizens in the new world take soma, a pleasure drug, to help them forget and get away from unhappy thoughts rather than doing something about their discomforts. They also take soma before they sleep with one another to enhance the pleasure and let them do the deed without much thought. One example is when Lenina told Bernard to just take soma so he doesn’t have to think about what he’s doing so they can have sex (Huxley 92). They use this drug as an escape from reality so they don’t have to think, to let them get high and be …show more content…
In Fahrenheit 451, love and family is not something everyone in society does. Their world derives from watching television and listening to the radio and the shell so that they don’t think about anything else. Seeing their children three times a month and not being committed into their marriages shows how selfish society really is and they only care about what the government wants them too. In Brave New World, their world submerges themselves in drugs and sex as a way to distract them in a way to promote happiness. Relationships don’t even exist and family is forbidden to all. Their saying everyone is for everyone has taking its toll on society and shows how government power has manipulated the citizens to believe in that way. Government control in both societies has exceeded its authority to promote happiness that their citizens are actually unhappy. The worlds in both novels are giving a fake reality to stop citizens from seeing the actual truth, all in which lead them to be emotionless and heartless. The two best emotions both books are supposed to represent in their own way actually downplay it by insufficient
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.
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.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book with a variety of themes including mass media, censorship, conformity vs. individuality, distraction vs. happiness, action vs. inaction, and knowledge vs. ignorance. These themes are expressed through events, quotes, and characters in Fahrenheit. The themes are also expressed in the real world in many things.
...very night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning”. In Fahrenheit 451, technology is so pervasive, so omnipresent, that it takes up all of everyone’s time. They are so immersed, they never have any time to think about anything, All of their free attention is sucked up by their addiction and reliance on technology, that they never think about their own happiness, or that of the people around them. They never stop to question their happiness, so they assume that they are happy. If one never thinks about it, then they automatically assume that it is okay. For instance, if one doesn’t think about an animal attacking them, then there must not be one, for if there was, then they’d be thinking about it. This is an instinctive trait in humans, and the Fahrenheit 451 government is using it to their advantage.
The future of the world is a place of thriving commerce and stability. Safety and happiness are at an all-time high, and no one suffers from depression or any other mental disorders. There are no more wars, as peace and harmony spread to almost every corner of the world. There is no sickness, and people are predestined to be happy and content in their social class. But if anything wrong accidentally occurs, there is a simple solution to the problem, which is soma. The use of soma totally shapes and controls the utopian society described in Huxley's novel Brave New World as well as symbolize Huxley's society as a whole. This pleasure drug is the answer to all of life's little mishaps and also serves as an escape as well as entertainment. The people of this futuristic society use it in every aspect of their lives and depend on it for very many reasons. Although this drug appears to be an escape on the surface, soma is truly a control device used by the government to keep everyone enslaved in set positions.
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel that was written based on a dystopian society. It begins to explain how society copes with the government through conformity. Most of the characters in this story, for example: Mildred, Beatty, and the rest, start to conform to the government because it is the culture they had grown up in. Individuality is not something in this society because it adds unneeded conflict between the characters. The government tries to rid of the individuality it may have. Individuality was shown in the beginning quite well by using Clarisse McClellan and Montag. Clarisse McClellan shows her individuality quite clearly, more towards Montag. After Montag has been living off conformity, he decided to start questioning the world and ends
Fahrenheit 451’s Relevance to Today Fahrenheit 451’s relevance to today can be very detailed and prophetic when we take a deep look into our American society. Although we are not living in a communist setting with extreme war waging on, we have gained technologies similar to the ones Bradbury spoke of in Fahrenheit 451 and a stubborn civilization that holds an absence of the little things we should enjoy. Bradbury sees the future of America as a dystopia, yet we still hold problematic issues without the title of disaster, as it is well hidden under our democracy today. Fahrenheit 451 is much like our world today, which includes television, the loss of free speech, and the loss of the education and use of books. Patai explains that Bradbury saw that people would soon be controlled by the television and saw it as the creators chance to “replace lived experience” (Patai 2).
How does one achieve happiness? Money? Love? Being oneself? Brave New World consists of only 3 different ways to achieve happiness. Each character of the brave new world will have his or her different opinion of the right way to achieve happiness. In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley explains many people achieve happiness through the World State’s motto – “community, identity, stability”, soma, and conditioning.
Happiness plays an important and necessary role in the lives of people around the world. In America, happiness has been engrained in our national consciousness since Thomas Jefferson penned these famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson). Since then, Americans have been engaged in that act: pursuing happiness. The problem however, as Ray Bradbury demonstrates in his novel Fahrenheit 451, is that those things which make us happy initially may eventually lead to our downfall. By examining Guy Montag, the protagonist in Fahrenheit 451, and the world he lives in we can gain valuable insights to direct us in our own pursuit of happiness. From Montag and other characters we will learn how physical, emotional, and spiritual happiness can drastically affect our lives. We must ask ourselves what our lives, words, and actions are worth. We should hope that our words are not meaningless, “as wind in dried grass” (Eliot).
In the novel, the World State values happiness instead of truth. Soma blinds Brave New Worlders from seeing anything that is negative or distasteful. Drugs and alcohol help people escape reality and many people use because the truth is too painful for them to endure. Drugs transport people into a different world, their own world where they are on top because all of their problems have disappeared for the moment. But, without sorrow there is no real happiness. If someone is happy all the time, they wouldn’t even realize that they are experiencing joy, because that is all they are used to. They have never experienced any other type of emotion. Anger, fear and misery make people appreciate happiness because it is desired. In Brave New World, there is no such thing as desire as Mustapha Mond, the controller, explains, “People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can 't get...And if anything should go wrong, there 's soma” (Huxley 220). The government doesn’t understand that desire creates an appreciation for happiness, and when it is finally attained, it is a very strong emotion. When anything is handed to someone, as joy is in Brave New World, the value is drastically decreased. But, when there is anticipation or work is put in, the value will be justifiable. If Americans continue to rely on products for happiness, there will be no
Imagine living in a society where there is no sense of independence, individual thought or freedom. A society where the government uses disturbing methods that dehumanize people in order to force conformity upon them. Taking away any sense of emotion, It would be very undesirable to live in a society with such oppression. Such society is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The World State uses social restrictions to create permanent artificial personalities for people within the society. The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further to be thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population.
In 1984, Winston wants to love Julia, but it is wrong for them to have feelings for each other. Whereas in Brave New World, Lenina is upset because John does not have the same feelings for her. Likewise in both novels, it is strange to love another person. Winston feels a connection to O’Brien because he feels like they can rebel against the Party together. It’s so strange to care about people other than yourself in both dystopian novels, that no one does for example O’Brien turns Winston into the thought police. Ironically, Winston goes to the Ministry of Love to get tortured for being in love. However, in Brave New World the citizens don’t get tortured, loving is just frowned upon. Neither of the novels showed families or how families impacted
During This semester in English The books,stories and movies we read and watched all had a certain theme relevant to them. A Common Theme Found in The Book, “Fahrenheit 451” By Ray Bradbury, The Movie “the Power Of 1” and The story “Harrison Bergeron” By Kurt Vonnegut is the Theme of Persistence for equality and the Idea that If they keep trying they will reach what in their minds is equality.
The theme of Brave New World is freedom and how people want it. The people want poetry, danger, good and bad things. This novel shows that when you must give up religion, high art, true science, family, love and other foundations of modern life in place of a sort of unending happiness, it is not worth the sacrifice. These are all also distinguishing marks between humans and animals that were abolished here. In exchange, they received stability with no wars, social unrest, no poverty or disease or any other infirmities or discomforts. However, they only live with an artificial happiness, which they have been brainwashed to love since infancy. There is no marriage, no violence or no sadness which may result in an unstable society which would threaten the totalitarian government. But the majority of the people don't realize what they are missing as it's never been there. It's a society in which the human being only serves a sociological and scientifical purpose; the individual thought is overruled by one big autocratic state. Huxley is also telling us to be careful with our science, or we may end up like the Utopians, mass producing identical citizens, then brainwashing them to think alike and to think exactly what the government mandates.
Huxley, in this book, is trying to give a subtle message that no matter how successful we think we may be with the amount of technology we have, success will not grow from technology, but rather with human interaction and emotion towards one another. Throughout Brave New World many controversial topics are brought up. This book is based on the unrealistic want of a utopian society. As we all know a utopian society is simply impossible no matter how hard one may work at it. Brave New World is a perfect example of how society can take the use of technology to a deep and far place from moral