...Media influence is everywhere: governing the opinions of those that take in its information. As technology becomes more easily obtainable, censorship within media content is frequently used to direct viewers into a certain way of thinking. Literary critics like Peter Sicero, Thomas F. Bertonneau, and Calum Kerr use their literary analyses to examine similar conflicts in Fahrenheit 451. These journals demonstrate the way the government uses television to force viewers to believe what is being fed to them through television programming. Ray Bradbury uses allusions, characterization, foreshadowing and symbolism to demonstrate how the government pressures citizens into like-minded ways of thinking to continually gain power. Bradbury uses allusions,...
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...Ray Bradbury Research Paper The short novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury published in 1953 is a story that revolves around the near future where books and literature and banned and burned. Many aspects of this book where heavily influenced by events that happened in Ray’s life when he was a child and throughout his adulthood. The location of Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an urban American city, no specific name or location given, surrounded by suburban houses in the outskirts of the city. Ray had been living in southern California near Santa Ana around the time had begun writing Fahrenheit 451. It was around 1940 “…Ray wrote what he would later call ‘five ladyfinger firecracker’ which led to the ‘explosion’ of Fahrenheit 451.” (Weller 199) The story takes place in the 20th century with no specific year given where two nuclear wars had taken place since 1990. Ray was inspired by the events taking place at the time such as the rise of Nazi Germany, McCarthyism and the “witch hunt set out by the House Un-American Activities Committee in Hollywood in 1947…” (Weller 199) In addition to the setting, a few, but not all of the characters from Fahrenheit were influenced by certain events from Ray’s life. On a windy autumn night in Los Angeles, Ray had been out on a walk with a friend of his, when “A police car wheeled up beside them. The officer stepped out and approached the two men. He asked what they were doing” (Weller 199) in which Ray responded, “Putting one foot in front...
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...of a world without the influence of creative thinking, this novel conjures a grim outlook. In the novel by Ray Bradbury titled Fahrenheit 451, fire symbolizes everything from the destruction of social issues to the renewal of hope. Guy Montag is the protagonist who faces a dilemma in a community that has chosen to burn all of the books. Montag is a fireman who is tasked with burning books as a profession. Montag meets a series of characters who aid him in his journey of preserving the information in the books. In the end, the knowledge is preserved in an unconventional way. In the article by Michelle Dean, titled “Our Young-Adult Dystopia”, she describes the current situation of books being mass produced without much substance. She discusses works that are similar to each other and lack depth....
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...The themes within Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury differ from the themes in many of Poe’s stories, but also share some similarities. In Bradbury’s story, major themes include the influence censorship has on societies, the violent nature of human beings, and the discovery of self identity. Many of the themes in Poe’s stories include the effect of the loss of a loved one and the impacts of death on others. While the themes are not completely connected, Bradbury uses the death of one of Montag’s neighbors to spark a disgust in his current society which in turn leads to his discovery of his self identity. The violent nature of human beings drove others to kill Montag’s neighbor through a violent car chase. In stories such as “The Fall of The House...
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...Name Professor Class Date Fahrenheit 451 (word count: 1,426) The book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury conveys to the reader that censorship and technology can be a tool used by governments to restrict human freedoms supported by endless access to knowledge and intimate relationships. The message of the book is that censorship and technologies, without limit, will erode the nature of human freedoms experienced in a society that values access to knowledge, books, and deep thinking. The world within Fahrenheit 451 can be characterized by a population controlled by media and extreme levels of knowledge censorship. The media is the tool employed by the government and embraced by most citizens as a means of steering the group aimlessly through life; vicariously living out any lingering ambitions and motivations towards non-conformity through the characters inside the television. In an effort to stifle creative thinking, spiritual growth, resistance, and the human tendency towards a general thirst for knowledge, the government has issued legislation that makes books illegal. Books are considered a social evil due to their inherent ability to encourage individuals to question existing frameworks and think for themselves. Therefore, the society in the book lives in a world where history does not exist and the reality is constructed and delivered through the television. The book’s protagonist, Montag, represents an individual that makes a transition from a...
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...a leader." Throughout history, authors and writers have created characters that are meant to influence and inspire the protagonist. This is present in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. On the other hand, there are some stories such as Test by Theodore Thomas that have taken a different approach. First, in Fahrenheit 451 the author Ray Bradbury writes Clarisse into the novel to inspire the protagonist Guy Montag to take a stand and become an individual and to stop being controlled by the government. She does this by showing him who she is as a person, questioning his morals, and asking him about love. To begin, Clarisse attempts to show Montag who she really is and not for the fugitive that she’s claimed to be. "Well, doesn't this mean anything to you?" He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char coloured sleeve. "Yes," she whispered. She increased her pace. "Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way? "You're changing the subject!" "I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly," she said. "If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He’d say, that's grass! A pink blur? That's a rose-garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn't that funny, and sad, too?" (Bradbury When Montag tries to explain to Clarisse how important and significant burning books is she...
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...Censorship is very harmful to our society in many ways. Imagine if someone wanted to look up a topic, but they could not find it because of censorship. People would be angry, and also try to figure out why they could not find the subject. In Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, it shows how their society is messed up because of censorship. Censorship is the system or practice of censoring books, movies, etc. Censorship violates the first amendment, keeps people from being themselves, and sugarcoats the truth. Censorship violates the first amendment. Barbara Miner, author of “When Good Books Can Get Schools in Trouble” remarks,”The bill of rights protects not only freedom of speech but the right to petition the government.” It is okay for people to debate for freedom. They should have the right to do what they feel. The author of the article goes on to say the parents have the right to decide what their children can be exposed to....
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...HOW THE THEME EDUCATION EXTENT IN THE NOVEL ENTITLED FAHRENHEIT 451 BY RAY BRADBURY Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury that tells the story of a future world in which books are banned and burned, TV becomes everyone’s drug of choice, and independent thinking is basically illegal. This novel describes about what happens when books are forgotten or suppressed, and it makes the author’s arguments about the book as a keystone to intellectual freedom and education of the human being. Fahrenheit 451 begins with an ambiguous opening line: "It was a pleasure to burn" (33). The story emphasizes on the live of a fireman named Guy Montag. Inside this story, the author describes that the people live in an era where the houses are all fireproof, people are addicted with TV and radio and the most extreme is that the main job of the fireman is not to end a fire but to start one. Fireman’s job is to find books and burn them. In the beginning of the story Guy Montag was very confirmative, went along with everything the government had ordered him to do and didn’t really question anything. But by the end of the story, he was completely different. He had changed his views completely. One reason that motivated Montag to change was his curiosity. His curiosity started when Montag saw Clarisse McClellan, the 17 years old girl who lived in his neighborhood. Clarisse was really the first person to open up Montag’s mind by asking him questions about his job, “But why do you...
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...“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.” This is just one of the numerous significant quotes by Ray Bradbury in the novel Fahrenheit 451. The book Fahrenheit 451 was written in the 50’s during the time where book banning and censorship was realistic. It was written because of Bradbury’s belief that the world would look tyrannical in the future. The civilians in the book do not think divergently or question anything, and books are prohibited. Anybody who owns a book or has possession of them will face consequences that include arson of their home and imprisonment, which is the fireman's job to take care of. The firemen, including Montag the main character, find the citizens who have books and light their homes on fire. However, once Montag meets a girl named Clarisse, a “bizarre person” according to society because she has curiosity, everything changes. He begins to have his own beliefs...
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...The Failure of Fahrenheit 451 By Jeremy Smith 13 October 2003 I. In 1953, Ray Bradbury published a novel in which the burning of books presages the burning of the world. In the half century since, Fahrenheit 451 has emerged as a staple of high school and college syllabi and continues to chart best-seller lists. Both Simon & Schuster and Del Rey are releasing fiftieth anniversary editions this year. This past summer it was the number one best-selling science fiction/fantasy paperback in Barnes & Noble stores. While it is most often used as a way of talking about media and censorship, Fahrenheit 451 also represents a literary mode that seeks to prevent a certain future by describing it. This mode is often -- but not always -- dystopian. It is distinguished most by a moralistic and apocalyptic state of mind. Let's call it Cassandraism, after the daughter of Troy whose prophecies were not believed. Launched with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Cassandraism remains the most socially acceptable branch on the family tree of science fiction, embracing such respectably literary figures as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Margaret Atwood, who with her 1986 novel The Handmaid's Tale became its foremost contemporary practitioner. In Atwood's new novel Oryx and Crake, digital convergence and genetic engineering are combined and carried to their logical conclusion, a media-filtered apocalypse that the characters (and, one senses, the author) simultaneously...
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...Digression from conformity Through a series of events and experiences every living thing becomes a new version of themselves. These changes are imperative to people as they try to grow and, no matter what, it is hard to avoid such dramatic changes. The basis of Fahrenheit 451 revolves around the metamorphosis of Montag throughout the book, as Ray Bradbury vicariously explains the dreadful faith of society. Montag experiences vast changes that slowly destroy his ignorance of how life really is. Early in the book it is evident that Montag is caught in the centrifuge like society and is masked with happiness. As he encounters certain people he begins to realize that this complete ignorance could be detrimental. His actions after these changes shape how he handles the ending revolution of the book. Montag’s beginning innocence was what went through these dramatic changes to create a more...
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...the quote, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, citizens are not able to think and remember. By controlling thoughtless people, the government gains all the power and control. People lose themselves because they lack memory and knowledge. As a result, those in power gain through people not having knowledge and memory, but the individual citizens lose something important. In Montag’s society, memory and knowledge hold no real meaning. People have been trained to be thoughtless in Montag’s society. At schools kids have, “‘an hour of TV class. An hour of basketball or baseball or running...we...
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...Specifically, when Montag tries to drag Mildred into reading books with him, their distance is even more apparent. Mildred is irritated, wanting to continue her daily routine of watching television, but Montag wants Mildred to be there with him as he journeys towards change and enlightenment; however, she won't. Montag even explains, “‘Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say’” (Bradbury 82). In fact, she betrays him by turning him into the fire station. She calls the alarm on her own husband and their house ends up getting torched (Bradbury 114). As a result, it is apparent they are not close and have no effect communication. Furthermore, they are so distant in fact that Mildred has more loyalty to her society than she does to her husband. Overall, Mildred and Montag both have ineffective social...
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...A'Lexxus Foster April 17, 2015 American Literature Greene Running Title. “ Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is a novel set in a dystopian world full of ignorance, authority, disloyalty and most prominently, power. The form of government depicted in the novel can be described as some type of authoritarianism in which the citizens appear to have limited interaction and zero influence. Thus, the culture is molded through the broadcasting and the media substitute for actual human contact, with the government or anyone else. So long as the public is distracted and uneducated, the government seems to believe, they will be compliant and effortlessly handled. In the novel, we learn that very of the few citizen's challenge this administration’s...
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...Start A Fire With seen and unforeseen events constantly taking place in everyday society, the likelihood of this directly affecting a person’s life is highly probable. Opinions, struggles, challenges, counsel and the like, play a major role in radically altering the course of life for people for the better or worse. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury gives a story to the reader which explores the life of Guy Montag - the protagonist, whose nature and way of life was altered by several characters that he encounters throughout the course of the novel, most notably- Clarisse McClellan. As brief as her appearance in the novel was, she proves to be one of the major characters to have a disruptive effect on Montag throughout her direct interaction with...
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