Allegory Of The Cave In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Throughout the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, there is a mechanistic world that has changed humanity for the worse, correlating to today's society and the direction we are headed in. The society in the world of the novel never actually deals with nature, so they title their electronics as animals, or anything from nature, “As a beetle taxi hissed to the curb” (Bradbury 108) which puts the things they know in place of what they should know, and what should be surrounding them. The mechanistic world that they live in doesn’t necessarily mean that they are neglecting the nature that they should live with, it simply means that the government has shielded them so much that they have no better understanding of what should be. While readers

There is a significant metaphor Bradbury conveys in Fahrenheit 451, almost literally stated by Montag, “I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play?” (Bradbury 70) connecting the society of Fahrenheit 451 with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave through the depictions of innocence. The “cave” in Fahrenheit 451 is all of the screens that they can’t tear their eyes away from, calling the ones on their screens “family” literally choosing to be in the cave. While most of society lives in the cave, there are a select few who refuse to stay in the cave, and make an escape. Comparing a gardener to the sun using a metaphor, “The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, the lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." (Bradbury 150) Montag realizes that man made fire can never take the place of the natural fire that is the sun, much like the natural light in The Allegory of the Cave. Just like to book enthusiasts who wait for the smoke to clear to talk more about the knowledge they have, the newly freed prisoner of the cave goes back to tell his people about what he has seen and the new things that he has learned about the world. Montag, just like the freed prisoner, realizes that fire is no comparison to the life

al.). Whether we like it or not, technology is here, and here to stay, so it is imperative that students are allowed to use it freely in the classroom, “78 percent of students believe the internet helps them with school work” (Lenhart, et. al.) indicating that students are not simply using the internet for their personal pleasure, they are using it to better themselves in their education. Technology is here, and here to stay, students everywhere are using it, and for even less than half of the schools in the United states to believe that it is causing their students to be in a “cave”, it would give those students an unfair disadvantage in life after high school because they would lack the skills necessary in the current work force. Another problem that many believe technology causes is the way students compare themselves to each other, and how it can be harmful to their self esteem, and ultimately their education. However, what most people don’t realizes is that the comparison of oneself to another has been happening for thousands of years. Proving that new technology has nothing to do with a new concept of comparing ourselves to others, “Exemplars of excellence against which rank-and-file citizens could measure themselves… we do the same thing when we catch our own image in a store window, or when we enjoy mingling