Fahrenheit 451 Majority Is Not Always Right Essay

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 portrays a group of men called “firemen.” Their title, however, is ironic because of what fireman usually do. Instead of putting out fires, the men in this novel deliberately set books and suspected criminal homes ablaze. Montag, the novel’s protagonist, finds “pleasure” (Bradbury 1) in his job at the beginning of the book. Further into the story, he realizes that burning books and homes destroys knowledge and is fatal to others. Montag now recognizes that depriving a generation of history, religion, and morals have desensitized his people to the point that original thoughts are nonexistent. Furthermore, cares and concerns for others have vanished, and having fun reigns supreme in society.

We meet Guy Montag, a Fireman, who burns books in a futuristic and dystopian American society. The Central problem is Montag’s Man vs Society conflict in which he battles against an oppressive society.

Short of just 70 years ago, the United States was detached; segregated into communities of race and color. In the eyes of our modern society, this practice was cruel and inhumane, an example of just how much a culture’s perspective can change in time. Fahrenheit 451, a novel written and published by Ray Bradbury in 1953, focused on the consequences of change in a society through the eyes of Guy Montag. In the fictitious story, Guy serves as one of many firemen in the community; rather than removing the fires, they set them upon books, which had prohibited and illegalized. After a series of events that transpired in the novel, Montag would begin to recognize the intellectual censorship caused by the absence of books; beginning his crusade

The guilt begins to eat away at Montag's conscience, and illness overtakes him. Back in his home, he reports this event to his wife Mildred, expressing his opinions on the matter: "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing" (Bradbury 51).

Imagine living in a black and white world where all your thoughts, the way you speak and our daily routine are controlled by someone else. In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag starts to question the intentions of his own government after meeting Clarisse McLellan. Ray Bradbury explores the different forms of censorship through Montag’s wife, Mildred, the burning of books, and technology, in order to show there are consequences to censorship.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is about a society where books aren’t allowed because the government thinks they will make the people smarter. The fireman in this society are starting the fires instead of turning them off,they burn the people in the houses because they have books. Guy Montag, a fireman, has his views changed in this society by a young girl named Clarisse. He realizes that what he is doing is wrong and he wants to change it. He runs away from the government and runs into other men who also want to change the government.

“People want to be happy…[if] people don’t like [it]...burn it… burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.” (Bradbury 63). Imagine a classless, confined society where people’s opinion’s are squandered and knowledge is restricted. Individualism would be prohibited, imagination abandoned, and the population forced to obey as instructed. This robotic society is the world Ray Bradbury established in his book Fahrenheit 451. Guy Montag, the main character in Fahrenheit 451, struggles through this ruthless and savage society. Day in and day out, Montag, a common fireman, goes to work obeying as instructed. Throughout frequent situations, he realizes that society is twisted into a abhorrent knot, and his perspective of society is

When there are large powers in society, it is often to find that individuals hold an insignificant amount of power against them. The society described by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, clearly demonstrates this idea as the larger powers at play hold supreme power over helpless individuals. Published in 1953 around times of the Cold war and McCarthyism, the novel reflects Ray Bradbury’s personal concerns towards individuality through the means of consumerism and conformity. In the novel, knowledge is known to cause individuality. Individuality allows people to think, to form their own opinions, beliefs and personal values which threatens governmental social and political structures. When we are introduced to individuals who attempt to disregard

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a story that's deep meaning will make your hope for mankind burn brighter than ever. Bradbury's classic novel warned people of the past and people still today the dangers of the overwhelming presence of technology and the oppression of the government. Bradbury asks people to see the importance of books and intelligence, he tells us how we can benefit from them. Fahrenheit 451 was largely impacted by the fear of communism because of the time period that Bradbury lived in, which is very evident with the type of society Bradbury has created. Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 tells the risks of censorship and restriction of information through events such as outlawing books, people become mindless from censorship, and the use of mass media.

The burning of those books that create discontent by the firemen in the plot of 451 is used to create a passive thinking, politically correct, ignorant society through the censorship of ideas. This idea is present in 451 due to Bradbury’s social context of censorship, which was prevalent during the time Bradbury was constructing the text. This shows that Bradbury has constructed 451 to be a criticism of censorship. The fireman, in Fahrenheit 451, sole job is to burn and destroy books, they burn books because they trigger thought, which then triggers discontent amongst the population. The destruction of those that trigger discontent is used to make a sterile, plain society. Furthermore this leads to a society of political correctness, due to

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, he expresses his fear for the future and the emphasis on keeping some tradition in our society. He writes about a firefighter by the name of

When comparing the masterpieces of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 the astute reader is immediately able to see a minimum of two recurring themes in both of them. “Orwell had produced an imaginative treatise of totalitarianism, cutting across all ideologies, warning of the threat to humanity should any government, of whatever political complexion, assume absolute power” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 12). Meanwhile Bradbury described the horrors of a society that became a totalitarian regime through the Firemen who attempted to control the ability of thought. Both of these structures depended on limiting the thought of the citizens either through Newspeak in which the

The use of censorship to examine and eliminate elements in media that are found to be unorthodox or radical has been prevalent in society for centuries. Through censorship, ideas found to be objectionable or offensive are repressed. In his prophetic novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury denotes the common practice of government censorship of books as a suppressive and marginalizing concept for humans because it strips them of the realities, truths, and meaning behind books and deprives them the freedom to deliberate and act on them. The protagonist, Guy Montag lives in a futuristic, American society and is a ‘firemen’; a group of men that deflect the old conventional purpose of stopping fires, to creating

In the book Fahrenheit 451, evidence supports the creation of a dystopian society. A totalitarian government rules its citizens, information censored, and the vast majority of citizens brainwashed. One of the best examples of that in would be the role of its firemen. Their job is reversed much to the detriment of society. When Montag speaks with Captain Beatty regarding their job, he asks, “Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than start them up and get them going?” (Bradbury 31) This demonstrates a dystopian society - instead of helping to prevent the spread of fires, firemen create them to burn down houses in order to burn books and wipe them out of existence. This establishes that in this futuristic world, society has forgotten the

Captain Beatty, the chief of the firemen in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” has his own view of the world. Beatty’s view is that he and his firemen needs to preserve everyone in the society pleased. Whether the happiness comes from the entertainment of T.V. or from burning the novels someone opposes to, Beatty only wants to examine people delighted with what they have. If someone has a problem with a text, the firemen are to burn that text immediately, it does not matter if others favor the novel or not. Beatty’s view of the world is that firemen were given an advanced description of their jobs for their peace of mind, along with burning everything that is a detriment to people’s