A Book of Endless Lessons As the course of time runs our lives, the inhabitants of Earth rely increasingly more on the services of technology to perform our the tasks we face in our daily lives. Books are growing increasingly unpopular as modern interactive entertainment services advance. The society built by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 inhabits a shallow human race at their weakest, living false lives within the walls of their television screens.
Fahrenheit 451 is written by a famous writer whose name is Ray Bradbury,and this book’s topic is dystopian. In this book, author creates a future world. In that world, because people have a high technology and a fast,convenient life. So the government decided to destroy all the books. In this case, the fireman’s job is not extinguished, they need to burn the books. A paper ‘s ignition point is Fahrenheit 451 degrees, that’s the reason why the author use this as this book’s title. The whole book describes a change in Montag’s psychological. Through this story we can learn lots of things. One of the most important thesis is: Highly developed technology will replace the traditional culture, and make people’s soul incomplete.
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.
Without knowledge nothing can prosper and leads to destruction. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury claims that depriving people of knowledge will only make them gullible and easy to manipulate by an elite group. The setting of the novel is a great example of Bradbury’s claim. The novel is set in a dystopic society where books are banned, technology is everywhere, and the government controls everything; making the people easy to manipulate. For example Mildred is easily manipulated by the “parlor walls.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines character as, “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual”, these qualities can range from a simple opinion, to an action, to a character’s lifestyle. While Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451 and Wade from Ready Player One are both uniquely distinct, they share many qualities that unites them as one.
With the exponential growth in the number of available books and limited time to read them, Birkerts believes that the newer generations have neglected wisdom altogether. He
(MIP-3) Contrary to the society's thought that what they are doing is beneficial, it ultimately demolished the society in the long run. (SIP-A)Throughout the story, the community is fighting in a war and despite many warning signs showing they are in danger, they failed to recognize it. (STEWE-1) Unlike most, Montag realizes what is going on and with concern says, “I've heard rumours; the world is starving, but we're well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumours about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure!” (70). The world outside the society Montag lives in can see the danger in what is going on with their obsession with technology,
Neil Gaiman once wrote, “some books exist between covers that are perfectly people-shaped” (Gaiman xvi). The idea that books can be defined as the sharing of thoughts and information between people reveals a deeper meaning in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist faces a society in which books are censored and, thus, burned. This, according to his definition, means that if books become banned, certain connections between people will, too, be destroyed. Ray Bradbury reveals the theme (the importance of books) through the protagonist’s dynamic character, which comes as a result from his conflicts with society.
Being obsessed with technology can destroy a society, and people’s relationships in it. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 to keep the future from turning into the dystopian world in the book. The characters in the novel are attached to technology more than their own families. Everyone is caught up in television, and they do not stop to see what is going on around them. The firemen burn books and houses instead of putting out fires. Montag finally starts to notice how messed up his society is when he has conflicts with different people. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury he uses both internal and external conflicts to hint to the audience that life is more consequential than worrying about the technology.
Dystopian Affairs Ray Bradbury’s depiction of a dystopia is interpreted through Guy Montag and his escape from society as well as Captain Beatty and his desire to get rid of books when they explore the technology and its advances in his novel, Fahrenheit 451. Born in a time of despair from the ongoing World War II, Bradbury fell in love with books as well as horror from a young age, and he enjoyed the sense of adventure it created (“Ray”). Bradbury uses “Fahrenheit 451 [as a reflection of his] lifelong love of books and his defense of the imagination against the menace of technology and government manipulation” (“Ray”), and bases his plots, characters, and themes on his past experiences and memories. World War II is a time period when literature was suddenly disappearing and technology became greatly significant. Realizing the troubles technology will create, Bradbury wrote stories based on dystopian affairs, including his most powerful novel, Fahrenheit 451.
Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, presents a society in which humans suffer from depression, fear, and loss of empathy which are the result of censorship of free thought and knowledge. Humans suffer from loss of empathy due to their lack of human interaction. People live in fear of the government as the dystopian society deprives the people of knowledge. Depression is evidenced by suicidal tendencies caused by hollow lives. Bradbury uses the loss of empathy in order to demonstrate the effects that censorship of free thought and knowledge have upon the individual and society.
Without books and the woman that chooses to burn along with them when Montag burns a house, Montag would not arrive to the conclusion that “a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper” (51-52). Montag finally knows the importance of books and the great effort a person puts into writing them. Had Montag not realized this, his journey to enlightenment would slow or halt completely because he would never learn to appreciate the beauty and information in stories.
A large majority of books use many types of literary elements and devices. An example of a literary device is imagery; the five senses. This is one of the most descriptive types of writing as it conveys what the character is feeling or smelling. It’s a more human way of writing in some ways.
Annotated Works Cited Eller, Edward E. " An overview of Fahrenheit 451. " Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2014.
Journal #3 Novel Study Fahrenheit 451 Set in the futuristic world controlled by media, Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of the protagonist Montag, a fireman whose job is to burn book, his search for knowledge and self-identity. Books are considered illegal and banned because they make people think and question. I feel sympathy for Montag as his wife does not have any emotional attachment to him as she only care about her “family” on the parlor walls and betrayed Montag by reporting to the firemen that he has books in his possession. Montag also faces numbers of obstacles in his journey for self-identity. Fahrenheit 451 shares many similarities of the setting in the novel The Giver.