What Are The Similarities Between The Matrix And Fahrenheit 451

Although Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 preceded The Wachowskis’ The Matrix by almost half a century, they share many themes -- both overt, and covert. In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist Montag goes through three phases of life: being oblivious to the dystopia, being in conflict about it, and resolving to be liberated from it. Montag’s ‘awakening’ was caused by his own curiosity and internal dissatisfaction with his life and the world he lived in. However, the actions that he took seemed to be completely subconscious, and not planned. In comparison, in the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, the protagonist Neo made the conscious decision to take the red pill, which represented his desire to learn the truth about the world. Although both stories share the common theme of individuals rebelling from a society, a more covert motif is the protagonists, Neo and Montag, finding themselves.

When Montag stole books from the old woman’s house, and hastily confessed to his wife Mildred, he claimed that it was not his fault: “So it was the hand that started it all . . . His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms . . . His hands were ravenous.” (Bradbury 38). By claiming what he had done was automatic, and denying any conscious involvement on his part, he wasn’t able to admit to himself that he subconsciously wanted to rebel from his society’s expectations. Montag blamed his hands for several other crimes through the course of the story, and they became a powerful symbol for his instincts of rebellion, defiance, virtue and his thirst for truth. Montag’s thoughtless actions were similar to Mildred’s unconscious overdose, as they were the result of some hidden sense of dissatisfaction within him, even though he did not consciously acknowledge