Fahrenheit 451 Critical Lens Essay

Imagine a world where firemen start fires instead of putting them out. Fahrenheit 451 is set in a utopian, or dystopian to us, society, where books are burned and people rarely have real social interaction. Although Fahrenheit 451 seems nowhere close to our society, we are both alike and different to their world.
The freedom of information is both very different and somewhat alike. In Fahrenheit 451, information is restricted, and people are given so many useless “‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information”(pg 58). So they’ll be ‘happy’, but it is a fake happiness. Because of this people think they are happy, but commit suicide because they are not. There are also a small few who still read books, but they must keep it a secret, or the books

Books are everywhere, with public libraries in every town and libraries in every school. And due to advancing technology, books are available on tablets and ‘ebooks’, allowing people to read great works of literature without wasting paper and killing trees. In contrast, in some places information is restricted. One great example is China and North Korea, where, similar to Fahrenheit 451, information is restricted to state propaganda, and the people don’t have access to information, but think they do.
Social lives and interaction in Fahrenheit 451 are also somewhat different than our world. In their world, people don’t usually interact, and they have parlor ‘families’ on TV screens. Any relationship someone does have is usually fake, shallow, and distant. In the book, Millie interacts with her neighbors, but all they do is watch the parlor TV’s. When Montag unplugs the parlor, the women can’t seem to have a meaningful conversion, and repeat the same sentences to each other. On the other hand, some people, such as Clarisse, have real conversations, like when she talks with her