Fahrenheit 451: An Examination of Right Vs Wrong
Carly Johnson
6th period
12/10/08
In the world of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, society leads an existence without emotion or thought. It Is without these crucial parts of life that the people's perception of right, wrong, and truth is compromised.
The world that they live in generates every emotion or deep thought for them. Books are banned for fear of thought surrounds them, and people literally live in a house of television walls. These thought stifling mechanisms create casual attitudes on substantial human dilemmas such as death. This is shown in the beginning of the book upon Mildred's sudden suicide attempt, the men sent to save her replace her blood without any thought to the emotional damage of it. "Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain like a mallet, bang..."(15) They go on to demand fifty dollars. In another example later in the book Montag experiences the emotional trauma that came with burning down a woman with her books. He comes home to his wife sickened by what happened, after Montag throws up on the rug Mildred simply asks "what did you do that for?" Montag replies somberly telling her of the woman and her books. Mildred thinks nothing of it noting " well, good thing the rug is washable..." (pg. 49) In this statement she chooses to ignore the obvious sadness associated with what Montag just went through and instead focuses on cleaning the rug, this shows her emotional level is severely limited. In addition Mildred seemingly fails to see the fault of the men in this situation, she thinks nothing of a death that could have been prevented. This is because her sense of right and wrong is weakened, as is true with the rest of the society.
The idea of right vs wrong is irrelevant in the fast paced world of Fahrenheit 451 nobody ever seems to have the time or the resources to think about their actions. Everyone is so far away from their own selves they don't find it...