Fahrenheit 451 Essay
Essay
1. Bradbury believes that governments could use technology in the near future to desensitize people towards one another, the consequences of censorship, and the pursuit of knowledge. The ubiquitous and ever glaring wall-screen TV is the greatest governmental instrument to keep the populace under control. The government’s approved vacuous viewing would keep the populous too sedated to question or think about anything different that might in anyway challenge the government’s firm grip on society. The government could keep people so glued to TV programming and their ears so filled with the government’s censored messages broadcast through their seashell radios (ear-buds); they wouldn’t have time to actually conduct a meaningful conversation with another person. Jet car transportation would not only eliminate time to smell the roses, the roses would only appear as abstract streaks of pink as the vehicles race along the highways, thus removing thoughtful interaction with the natural environment.
In the novel Montag goes into his room after meeting Clarisse and he hears the buzzing of the seashell radio in Mildred’s ear as she is laying on a great shore listening to the broadcast coming off the dark ocean and into her ear as she lays in the bed: not sleeping but not there, and this had occurred every night. She hadn’t fully slept for years.
The Mechanical hound in the story is to show that there would be no civil rights guaranteeing a fair trial to determine innocence or guilt, but people would simply be targets to the machine. This “hound” had no feelings but simply killed a person or other
living creature based on DNA samples provided to its onboard computer. The ‘Beetle’ cars were the high speed jet-propelled cars in the story that were the cause for the 200 foot billboards instead of 20 foot billboards because the people went so fast in the story that they needed to extend the billboards. And just the same as the billboards,...