Fear And Change In Ray Bradbury's Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed

When I first began reading Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, I thought that it would be the same story as other dystopian pieces of literature; however, after further analyzing the novel I found that Bradbury used many allusions from famous pieces of literature. These allusions show foreshadowing, irony, and the main character, Guy Montag’s thoughts about the totalitarian government in Fahrenheit 451.

On page 140 of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses similes and connotative language to depict the experience of a new beginning and the feeling of breaking away from societies conformity. For instance, when Montag first realises he is truly safe and free, “He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors” (140). A stage is used by actors that produce plays, musicals, and movies. All of these actors and actresses have these roles that are set before even knowing who is acting out what. This shows how the people act as parts or roles, all being directed because they have no freedom to think and make decisions by themselves because they are restricted by societys normality they were forced to follow. In addition, when Montag knows that

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is full of important morals and themes. The book is flooded with symbolism and meaning to both the real world and science fiction world that Bradbury has created. With so many themes in this book it is difficult to choose the ones that contain the most importance, but some of them can be picked out from all the rest, for example, you must have bad things to have good things, you have to earn your happiness and finally, your opinions are influenced by the people around you. These themes show up multiple times in the book and are expressed heavily in the story.

As much as some of us may fail to realize it, fahrenheit 451 relates to current and future times and ideas more than it should. The science fiction of fahrenheit 451 becomes less and less of a fiction every day. The blood, war, and revolution also strike as too close for comfort. The author, Ray Bradberry, also took the time to show some of his transcendentalist views throughout the end of the book.

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.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 explores what is considered happiness in a futuristic society where the citizens live censored and superficial lives, favoring mindless entertainment and ignorant bliss over knowledge, freedom, and individuality. While some characters initially appear to be satisfied, the majority show evidence that they are not genuinely content and struggle to live truly happy lives due to their society. Shown through varied figurative language and symbolism, Bradbury explores different characters and their contrasting pursuits of happiness, conveying a message of how the illusion of happiness of materialism and entertainment fails against the true happiness of knowledge, freedom, and individuality.

“Gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face” (Bradbury 132). The people in Fahrenheit 451 are exactly as the protagonist, Montag, describes them: gray, animal, dehumanized and lifeless. Ray Bradbury has built a society in which people spend their days mindlessly watching television. Violence, bullying and murder are common, especially coming from school children, who spend their school days watching even more television. Montag is a fireman who burns books and slowly comes to understand the dehumanized and meaningless state that his society is in. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates how dehumanization can lead to a meaningless

Some have named Ray Bradbury “the uncrowned king of the science-fiction writers” because of his imagination and beautiful way of making Fahrenheit 451 come to life. The book Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books to deal with a future society filled with people who have lost their thirst for knowledge and for whom literature is a thing of the past. The author mainly portrays this world from the point of view of Montag, a man who has discovered the power that knowledge contains and is coming to grips with the fact that it is outlawed. However, the reader also gets to see what life is like for one of the people content in living a life lacking in independent thought and imagination through his wife, Millie. Through the characterization of Mildred, and his use of figurative language in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury warns that technology has the ability to hinder independent thoughts and ideas.

Without the presence of words and books, one loses the ability to be independent, like most characters in Fahrenheit 451. The main character, Guy Montag, does not wish to be like everyone else; he wants to have the ability to consider things for himself. With all of the brand-new technology and the disappearance of books, he believes this is no longer possible. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, the presence of technology in society are used to prove the importance of reading, independence, and thinking for oneself.

Dystopia is a popular genre in which authors write about a fictional society that is perceived to be perfect and ideal by the vast majority of the people in it. Authors must intrigue the reader, and this is difficult because they have to somehow illustrate a future that is vaguely similar to ours. However, it has to be completely fictional, which makes it tough to formulate realistic storylines. Nevertheless, these authors use literary elements to counter these difficulties and produce realistic characters and you can see this when Ray Bradbury, Ayn Rand, and James Dashner use symbolism in their respected novels, Fahrenheit 451, Anthem, and The Maze Runner. This literary technique gives Dystopian Literature the uniqueness and adds the key elements to make the story flow.

“Ray Bradbury’s writing danced along the boundaries between mystery, sci-fi, horror and fantasy”. (Brin 1) Ray Bradbury is an Author, famous for his science fiction short stories and novels. Many of his ideas influenced the stories of Hollywood. His short story “The Veldt” is similar to that of the movie “Smart house”. His idea of childhood not being completely innocent that he establishes in “The Small Assassin” can be seen in many horror films both past and present. The ‘butterfly effect’ that Bradbury uses in his short story “The Sound of Thunder” was used in the Doctor Who episode “Father’s Day.

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.

The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury tells a story of a dystopian future where books are banned by the government and burned. There are several themes to this story and most of them relate to each other. Some of these themes include moronic television and conformity. The main theme of Fahrenheit 451 is censorship and how it is dangerous to society.

In Fahrenheit 451, the author Ray Bradbury invokes a sense of fear by the use of dark tone. Bradbury illustrates a dark tone with the main character Guy Montag who is described as a person who loves to burn; he is portrayed as a man who loves his craft of burning books. In the passage Montag says, “IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN.IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury, 1) this portrays his love to burn books in a negative manner. Montag enjoys things being eaten, distorted, and blackened, which in turn causes a dark depiction. Another example of dark depiction is used when Bradbury describes his hose as a python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world (1) . Describing the hose as a python

In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag experiences a paradigm shift as he transforms from a disoriented fireman to a learner who wants to gain knowledge through literature. Montag struggles with his newfound fascination with what was once trivial items because of his inability to ask questions under the bonds of conformity. However, the society prohibits people from reading for fear that they would express individuality and perhaps even rebel once they gain knowledge. Through the use of characterization and diction, the Bradbury demonstrates Montag’s desire for individuality and the society’s command of conformity in order to build a suspenseful mood, which keeps the reader’s interest.