Influences In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

ay Bradbury’s Influences in the Writing of Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 was written in a time full of uncertainty, betrayal, and fear. The author of this book, Ray Bradbury, used the themes of this era of which he experienced to write a book that allowed people to see bits and pieces, while not always positive, of themselves in the characters in which Bradbury created. This mirroring of society helped shed light on how they were interacting with each other and revealed how twisted their actions truly were. The events of the Red Scare and McCarthyism are reflected in the paranoia of Montage’s community and how quickly they betrayed one another. When one of Monatg’s wife’s friends says, “But I won't come in this fireman’s crazy house again

"Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it?... I don't hear those idiot bastards in your parlor talking about it.” (Bradbury, Pg. 73-74) Montag comes to the realization in this book that the world in which he lived was full of things that should have bothered people, but the continuous exposure to them turned them into an everyday occurrence. We can correlate these occurrences to things like the threat of nuclear war or the expansion of the military-industrial complex into everyday life all of which Bradbury directly experienced. Kevin Hoskinson writes, “The scientists were literally guessing about how to detonate the bomb, how big to make the bomb, and, most significantly, how strong the bomb would be.” This casualness toward things such as nuclear weapons not only frightened Bradbury but also most of the world. “America's nuclear climax to World War II signaled the start of a new age in which the awesome powers of technology, with its alarming dangers, would provoke fresh inquiries into the dimensions of man's potentiality and the scope of his brutality” (Watt). This Brutality would be on display for Bradbury to see in the wars following World War 2 and the infringement of rights during the