In his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953, Ballantine Books, Los Angeles), Ray Bradbury asserts that although today’s technological advances have not caught up with the technology in the story, there is a hazard present that society may end up overly relying on technology at the cost of intellectual development verses the usage of books.
Fahrenheit 451 was written nearly fifty years ago but the setting for the book is supposed to be in the future which corresponds to present day censorship. The book portrays a dystopic society where the people are brainwashed through simple entertainment such as television and media. Books, courses of literature and science are abolished in this dystopia society. The most damaging loss of all is the degrading of literature. In the society today, brainless television shows, acts of violence, and the censorship of books has increased to devastating highs. As a result, the society portrayed in Fahrenheit 451 begins to show resemblance of the contemporary society.
Fahrenheit 451 involves such characters as Guy Montag, Mildred Montag, Captain Beatty, and Clarisse McClellan. Fahrenheit presents the firemen as the tools of censorship and illegal books. Since books rarely exist in their society they look not to things of intellectual worth, but to things with physical and non-thinking pleasure such as wall-to-wall television screens. The society in the story is so fooled by television that they consider the characters in the soap operas to be family. This mindless devotion to television shows the readers how these people have really turned into zombies. Ray Bradbury exemplifies the mindlessness of the people by bringing one character, Guy Montag, to enlightenment. Being that this story is written in third person, readers are able to view the thoughts of actualization as they occur to Montag. And this allows readers to relate to his character even more because we receive the sense that we are on the journey with him. Bradbury uses the...