Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Blank, grey eyes stare back at the TV walls set up around their homes, forgetting about time, watching people slaughter each other on the bright, lit up screen. Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, uses extremely advanced devices to help capture the point of the story. Seashells, reality TV, and other TV programs help him to jab at the injury caused by focusing on the wrong kinds of media in the society. Bradbury suggests media can be a fantastic outlet for entertainment, but when used incorrectly, people’s nature can become violent and poisonous; therefore, he implies that entire societies can collapse when media becomes twisted. To begin, one of the poisonous forms of media are the mindless TV shows put on by the government, which highlight

These TV shows are incredibly dangerous for everyone who lives in the society, as they take place in real time, like when Montag is running from the Mechanical Hound, and it’s being broadcasted to all of the citizens: “The innocent man stood bewildered, a cigarette burning in his hand. He stared at the Hound, not knowing what it was. He probably never knew. He glanced up at the sky and the wailing sirens. The camera rushed down. The Hound leapt up into the air with a rhythm and sense of timing that was incredibly beautiful. Its needle shot out...The camera fell upon the victim, even as did the Hound. Both reached him simultaneously. The victim was seized by the hound and camera in a great spidering, clenching grip. He screamed. He screamed. He screamed!” (Bradbury 142). In this quotation, they kill an innocent man, whom they label as Montag, to entertain their citizens with a chase, and when they cannot find Montag, they kill the innocent man instead, in cold blood, putting out yet another unsatisfactory splendor for their citizen’s minds, which act like sponges, seeping up all of the bloodshed they see. ‘The innocent man stood bewildered’ represents the confusion of the man when he sees the commotion, not knowing what is happening, just like in everyday life when citizens cannot recognize what is happening, with blank, empty minds. Just as appalling, ‘The victim was seized by the hound and camera’, which shows that this society has no interest in the well being of their citizens, and just care about keeping their minds empty and “entertained” with bloodshed, for they killed an innocent man just to satisfy the viewers at home watching the chase for Guy Montag. These insane reality TV shows are an even more harmful example, because they show the idea that even in the real world, it is okay to display these hurtful actions and