Examples Of Assimilation In Fahrenheit 451

In any society, it is inevitable to come across “the terrible tyranny of the majority,” to quote Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Whenever the majority of a society is given power and control over the minority, the result will be injustice. America is not exempt from this standard; as a variety of cultures and races have flowed into the country over the decades, America has become a truly multicultural society, though the minorities of this “salad bowl” population face ongoing mistreatment by their white so-called “superiors.” In essence, living in American society negatively impacts people with distinct cultural backgrounds, from being blatantly discriminated against, to being forced to abandon their culture for the sake of assimilation, to

Living as a Chinese-American, the narrator had to take on American attributes in order to be accepted -- for example, while normal Chinese women spoke with strong and assertive voices, the narrator adopted a whisper in order to appear “American-feminine.”(1) As a result, however, her shy demeanor caused her to be an unpopular outcast. She saw herself in another Chinese-American girl at her school, as they had certain, negative similarities. “I hated the younger sister, the quiet one. I hated her when she was the last chosen for her team and I, the last chosen for my team. I hated her for her China doll hair cut.”(1) Both the narrator and the girl chose to conform to American standards and made themselves “feminine”; relating the girl’s quiet nature to her own, the narrator hated her for it. ““If you don’t talk, you can’t have a personality. You’ll have no personality and no hair. You’ve got to let people know you have a personality and a brain...Nobody’s going to notice you.””(2) While she wanted to be quiet and feminine, as American standards encouraged her to be, she also hated the fact that she wasn’t strong or bossy like normal Chinese girls - one part of her only wanted to fit in with the “ghosts”, or the white people, while the other part of her hated the fact that her assimilation to America caused her to lose her voice and personality. As a Chinese-American, growing up in a biased society where she would be judged for both trying to assimilate and for keeping her cultural personality alive made the narrator become caught between two separate identities, which would tangle her in a web of self-hatred and despair -- in other words, being raised in America certainly had a bad influence over her life, her happiness, and her