Fahrenheit 451 Modernization Analysis

Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games are both literary examples of a dystopian setting. A dystopian setting is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. These literary works are dystopian because the government has full control over them. Some characteristics are information, independent thought, freedom is restricted. Also, the natural world is banished and distrusted.

Imagine that you have no knowledge of what happened in the past before you were born. You can’t read about it because your Government has forbidden the reading of books. You can’t hide them because there are no books left to read because they get burnt. The Government thinks that past knowledge is not important in the book.

The book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury consists of primary elements involving the dual nature of humanity. In a basic categorization of the society of Fahrenheit 451, there are those who conform to the government without question, and those who do not. Those like the character Mildred (housewife of the protagonist Guy Montag) are slaves to the technology ( e.g. Seashells, parlour walls) shoved down their throats by the government, as an attempt to trick the public into thinking that they are happy when they are not. However, there are also characters such as Clarisse (17year old girl), Faber (former English professor), and Montag who question the lack of substance in society and the unspoken contract between the governors and the governed. The dual nature of this society is seen in how particular characters react to the lack of depth and meaning to their lives as a result of the conformity and censorship by the government.

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the citizens of a corrupt United States are controlled by the government. Books and novels have been prohibited because they contain ideas and knowledge which allow the citizens to think. The government does not approve of thinking so the books and novels get burned by firemen. Instead of reading novels, the people can only watch television and read comics and sex magazines.

Without the Magna Carta, life and government would be completely different than how it is today. The importances of the Magna Carta are commonly overlooked, but the Magna Carta is what created the concepts of Democracy, the Parliament, Consent of the Governed, etc. These principles are the basics that made American government and even the World’s take on government excel and change drastically. All of these key points are what make the Magna Carta the most important influence on American Government and values because of its influence and effect on basic American values.

The power of education, decreasing availability of books, and popular entertainment in Fahrenheit 451 on the society greatly impacts the average American’s manner of thought. As the government establishes these three factors, the people accept the regulations, hoping they would improve their lives, yet it only brings a corrupt dystopia. While many of the people blindly favor the new rules, few of them see the negative aspect of them, especially Montag, who begins to view his profession differently. The fireman initially believed that burning books amends the wrong, yet the government conceals their true intention of incinerating books since they know that books hold knowledge, thus they suppress the owning of knowledge to easily control an

Fahrenheit 451 is a novel that discusses two main themes; censorship and oppression. Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of the protagonist, Guy Montag. At first, Montag takes pleasure in his profession as a fireman, burning illegally owned books and the homes of their owners. However, Montag soon begins to question the value of his profession, books, and at some point his life. Throughout the novel, Montag struggles with his existence and eventually escapes his oppressive, censored society.

The trope of a controlling government overreaching its bounds and establishing clear laws defining a person’s freedoms. Many novels and films have the whole population following rules that for ethical reasons should not be in place, rules that tell someone how he or she should handle a personal aspect of his or her life. Aspects that are considered the extremely personal such as who a person is allowed to be in a relationship with, or what career path a person should take, and even how much sex a person is allowed to have. In 1984 (a book by George Orwell) the main characters tell us how his ex-wife never really had sex with him and he tells us that she would cringe when touched and would only have sex once in a while to try to have children because she saw it as her duty and the government required that of her. It is later explained that girls are taught early on that sex is sinful and should only be done with the intention of creating more followers for big brother.

Knowledge can be defined as the acquaintance with facts, truths, and awareness. Inquiry is the act of questioning. In the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451, there is a prominent lack of both knowledge and inquiry. Meaning, definition of society, the essence of happiness, growth of media, and loss of entertainment all infer the absence of thinking and questioning in the book.

Can one decision change the course of an entire civilization? In different places one change can set the course for an entire country. Getting rid of books can cause loss of individuality, complete equality can lead to government with too much power and no government at all can lead to power mad citizens. In the dystopian societies of Fahrenheit 451, 2081 and the novel Extras, levels of awareness, leadership roles and guiding principles like popular sovereignty both compare and contrast society to modern America today.

In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury describes a dystopian world in which society has become hostile to knowledge and literature because it threatens to bring out the differences amongst individuals. This attitude towards literature and books has made reading an illegal activity. This change in attitude towards books provides changes not only in the society but also in the individual; the lack of emotion and the lack of individualism are prevalent throughout the text. Although the problematic effects Bradbury predicted for humanity and the self are not likely to become this extreme, with the decline in reading and mass media becoming the center of attention it is not hard to see how close our future is beginning to look like that of Fahrenheit