Good Example Of Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Novel “Fahrenheit 451” by R.D. Bradbury tells us a story of a totalitarian society in which literature is banned. Firemen have to burn all the forbidden books together with the dwellings of their owners. The author portrayed people who have lost touch with each other, with nature and the intellectual heritage of mankind. The life of the citizens in that society is completely free from the negative emotions; the only thing they do is entertaining. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next doorWho knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”(Bradbury, 5). However, this “happy” state is on the verge of all-out destructive war, which is still destined to begin the curtain of the work.
The main character of the novel, Guy Montag, is a fireman. He enjoys the fire, he feels like a conductor, performing a symphony of fire and destruction, he was extremely happy to see “things blackened and changed” (Bradbury, 1). He turned to ashes not just a paper, but pages full of history. Guy at this moment is just a usual part of that fantastic city. Soon we learn his romantic soul, seeking for new like a baby. He has two sides, but the second is crushed, hidden and almost dead. Under some circumstances he begins to question his existence. The first turning point was the meeting with 17 year old Clarisse McClellan. Mantag’s soul laterally splits into after he got to know this girl, who doesn’t live according to the laws of the city. The man was definitely amazed: “You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman, it just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.” (Bradbury, 23-24).The second event was when his wife got overdosed on sleeping pills, paramedics behaved callously with the poor woman and that made Montag feel alienated and disturbed. The third situation happened to him during work, a woman, whose house was burned together with books, decided to die in fire with her treasure. He takes some books with him to find out why woman died together with them. Guy “There must be something in books, something 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, 98). Soon, after getting to know English professor, he learned that books “stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” (Bradbury, 82). Montag heard some thoughts of professor that made him question the happiness of the world: “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” (Bradbury, 58). Since that time the former fireman became very sorry for the crimes he did to books: “We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.” (Bradbury, 78).
Montag reads books and they offer him peace and clarify the professor’s words that books are meant to remind us what stupid stubborn persons we are. Guy’s is overcoming conventional thinking and zombie turning. He realizes the society has trapped into a real intellectual and spiritual catastrophe. Now he is not afraid neither of mechanic dog, not other technologies hunting him, his internal rebellion turned into a real war. He carries a Bible and is guided by other people who have learnt literature by heart and together they escape that city of dead.
Bradbury, just like his characters, is too scared of our technical civilization, since their achievements come too costly for the Earth and humanity itself, as well as new discoveries become too disgusting to use. He depicts the world of the XXI century using the so-called extrapolation: picturing of the future by modeling the nowadays existing trends. The writer creates the anti-model of the society with his own symbolism. He reflects on the fate of terrestrial civilization of the future. The development of science has caused the rapid growth of technology, which influenced the social processes, and fundamentally changed the way people think. Technological advances greatly facilitated human life, however, almost atrophied his instinct for self-preservation and developed herd instinct instead, also helping people to survive in the new society, becoming not only a technocratic, but absolutely totalitarian. Above mentioned have an impact on the spiritual side of people’s life, cause alienation from culture and the natural environment, so as contact to them awakes anxiety, negative emotions. Therefore, the consumer becomes a norm of behavior exist, in which the mind is fed with entertainment and reality is replaced by primitive TV.
But these society changes are not only about technologies, not achievements, but in human morality. Curiosity and spiritual aspiration causes encourage a person to invent the airplane, but the inner evil loads the plane with bombs. In order to facilitate the work of the miners, people create dynamite, but the ferocious instincts stuff shells with explosives.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Farenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1953. Print.