Examples Of Materialism In Fahrenheit 451

(MIP-3) The correlation between materialism and the loss of connections between people is reinforced by the fact that those whose are not pulled in by the material world regain the traits that were lost. (SIP-A) Throughout the novel, there are a handful of people who are not swept up by the materialism that is so common in the rest of society. (STEWE-1) Clarisse is one of them. She claims that the people belonging to the society “‘don’t talk about anything… They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools and mostly say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else’” (Bradbury 28). The people she is talking about would say that they do not talk about nothing, that what they talk about is

(STEWE-2) Similarly, Faber is also not like the rest of the material society. He owns a pair of earplugs, which he shows to Montag and says, “For my ears when I ride the subway jets’” (Bradbury 80). In the subway advertisements are played at high volume (Bradbury 74), so his wearing of the plugs is a willful effort to not listen to them. These advertisements are signs of a society that is focused on “stuff” to the exclusion of all else, and they promote materialism as well. Faber, by not listening to the advertisements and by telling Montag about how the television has made Christ into a marketing tool, recognizes how the advertisements have a negative impact on people and promote materialism. Therefore he does not believe in materialism either. (STEWE-3) The men by the river, including Granger and others, are also not materialistic. One of them says “‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’” (Bradbury 148), although most of society would do just that because they only see, comprehend, and care about what is physically before them. Unlike them, however, Granger and his friends do care about more than what is at the