...adversity. His story draws similarities to the fictional character Guy Montag created by Ray Bradbury, author of the book Fahrenheit 451’s protagonist. Both of these authors utilize characterization and conflict to develop their main...
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...Fahrenheit 451 A Cautionary Tale (there may be grammar and or spelling mistakes.) By: Class: English 3 Honors Teacher: Fahrenheit 451 is a novel set in a futuristic America focused on a “fireman” named Montag Montag. In this world firemen like Montag set the blazes rather than extinguish them. Books are banned and if they were found in your house your home was burned with the books in it. As a result of owning a book you would languish for the rest of your days in a government facility. Montag had no problems with his job after all who wouldn’t love getting paid to burn things? Then one day they got a call about a woman who had a whole library of books in her house. When they arrived to do their job only one thing was wrong. The police hadn’t taken the woman away yet. It is here the story begins, with a woman who refuses to leave even as they are dousing her home with kerosene. When they try to remove her she reveals a kitchen match in her hand scaring them out of the house, she then lights the match committing suicide. Shaken by this incident no one talks on the ride back to the station. On his way home Montag runs into his new neighbor, seventeen year old Clarisse McClellan. A chatty, young girl who opens his eyes to the world of nature and not being one of societies stooges. After this meeting Montag returns home to find his wife overdosed on sleeping pills and promptly calls for help. Instead of paramedics he gets two technicians who are nothing more than plumbers...
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...KEY LITERARY ELEMENTS SETTING The novel takes place in an unnamed futuristic city sometime in the 24th century. The atmosphere is fantastic, for technology has transformed society into a land of virtual reality and ultra- futurism. Television is totally interactive. Giant crematoriums collect and dispose of bodies in a monstrous, helicopter-borne contraption known as the Big Flue. Doors are programmed to announce visitors before they even arrive. Books are illegal, as is any true exercise of thought. Mankind has become lazy and stupid because of the excesses of technology. In fact, the people no longer know how to do simple things because some machine has been designed to do everything. Although there are some familiar things in this society, like neighborhoods, cars, and trees, there are also many fictional creations, like the Mechanical Hound, a robot designed to track and kill violators of the law once it has been programmed with their scent. Houses are so fireproofed that firemen start fires rather than put them out. Houses have built-in alarms that ring when someone has a book in his possession, alerting the firemen to go there and begin the burning. There are so many suicide attempts that traveling orderlies are always on hand to pump stomachs or stitch self-inflicted wounds. In the craziness of this futuristic world, it is comforting to find that beds still have to be made and breakfast still has to be eaten. In short, Bradbury has created a world alien enough to be...
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...Comments on FUTURE SHOCK C. P. Snow: "Remarkable ... No one ought to have the nerve to pontificate on our present worries without reading it." R. Buckminster Fuller: "Cogent ... brilliant ... I hope vast numbers will read Toffler's book." Betty Friedan: "Brilliant and true ... Should be read by anyone with the responsibility of leading or participating in movements for change in America today." Marshall McLuhan: "FUTURE SHOCK ... is 'where it's at.'" Robert Rimmer, author of The Harrad Experiment: "A magnificent job ... Must reading." John Diebold: "For those who want to understand the social and psychological implications of the technological revolution, this is an incomparable book." WALL STREET JOURNAL: "Explosive ... Brilliantly formulated." LONDON DAILY EXPRESS: "Alvin Toffler has sent something of a shock-wave through Western society." LE FIGARO: "The best study of our times that I know ... Of all the books that I have read in the last 20 years, it is by far the one that has taught me the most." THE TIMES OF INDIA: "To the elite ... who often get committed to age-old institutions or material goals alone, let Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK be a lesson and a warning." MANCHESTER GUARDIAN: "An American book that will ... reshape our thinking even more radically than Galbraith's did in the 1950s ... The book is more than a book, and it will do more than send reviewers raving ... It is a spectacular outcrop of a formidable, organized intellectual effort ... For the first time in history...
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