I think the author was right about how people are turning to mindless entertainment more and more as people turn away from books. The author saw how people were disliking books more and more even in a time period when televisions were not even a major every day household item. The other part of the authors social commentary about government censorship I feel is applicable
Even today, many people don't believe that books are constantly being banned, censored, or even burned. In Florida whole elementary school libraries are being covered because all of the books aren't vetted by the government. With that being said, Ray Bradbury really captured what society would look like in a couple of decades even if most of us are scared to admit it. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, when conflicts encourage delusion or ignorance, questions are posed and realization occurs.
The differences between Fahrenheit 451 and our Society You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. In the society of Fahrenheit 451 books are illegal, Firemen start fires, and technology and government control people.
Fahrenheit 451 is set in a horrible, yet very possible, dystopian world. The setting is very undesirable because everyone thinks that books are bad so they have prohibited all of them. Everyone has this Belief because over time it has been convinced that books only bring sorrow. Most people have forgot about books and their importance, but the people who haven’t forgotten try to sneak books into their homes only to then have their homes burned, sometimes with them in it. Books are valuable, worth the time and effort, and in Montags’ world books are considered dangerous.
Up in Flames: Finding Similarities Between Fahrenheit 451 and the World Today How can we know the importance of books if we have never been in a world without them? The answer is clear; we can't. In the book Fahrenheit 451 we are given a glimpse into the future where there are no books at all. Believe it or not we are starting to become like the people in this imaginary world and share many similarities.
In “Fahrenheit 451”, some things are very similar to today. In the way society in general acts. This book was written in the 1950s. It is very alarming seeing how things described in the book now exist today. It is possible things that do not exist today, that are in this book, will one day exist.
In the society of Fahrenheit 451 information in the form of books are being reduced to ash. This in turn leads to a population who aren't knowledgeable on certain issues. This gives the government more power and the bad part is that the people let it happen. If the government works for us then the people could have stopped it or protested against it. A society where reading non approved books is possible because less people are becoming involved with books, altering information online is easy, and people think that the problem will fix itself or someone will do it.
In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the book shows a world where firemen burn books instead of putting out fires. Where reading books is illegal? Where society is heavily censored, and where society moves at such fast speeds that people have no time to think or reflect on themselves or their ideals as human beings. These things might seem insane, may surprise us, and may make us think about why a society would behave this way. This may all be confusing to us, but our society is not so much different.
The Dumbing Down Of Society Even though the people of Fahrenheit 451 have an easy lifestyle, technology is the main factor that is making that society dumb. The reason being is that here are new inventions constantly being created or updated to make our life more simple. As a matter of fact, it makes us lazier because we no longer have to think because a mechanical device is doing everything for us. In Fahrenheit 451, technology greatly affects their education system, and makes people confuse fiction with reality.
In our modern-day society, in contrast, we are allowed to have books and to read them, but they are on the decline as more books are beginning to be banned and replaced with modern technology. This is like the society in Fahrenheit 451 because books in our country are getting banned for the same reason, offending diverse groups of people, this is also why there are no books allowed in Fahrenheit 451. In the book, one of the reasons, they are banned is because the content of the books is offensive to certain minorities. Likewise, in our society certain books are getting banned because of their content. However, Fahrenheit also banned books because it helps control the intelligence of the population; this in contrast to our community, the government only bans books due to the material they contain, not because they want to control the intellectual level of the population.
People can rely on literacy and social awareness to help them be better aware and more thoughtful. But when people have neither of these skills it can harm the view they have of their surroundings. Fahrenheit 451 is an example of what would happen if social awareness and literacy were looked down on. Over time in the society where everything takes place in, not many are socially aware or can read, resulting to people going to great lengths for their beliefs and wants that they don 't really think through. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows that literacy and social awareness are important for society through the use of characterization and symbolism in the story.
In Fahrenheit 451 and the real world, there is disconnection from and devaluation of Books/Learning/Education. Faber backed up as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it.” (Bradbury 81) This shows that in both worlds there is a loss of reading books but in their world, they are told not to read and for ours, we are just choosing not to. “In recent years, literacy rates have started to decline in most parts of the world.”
There are many connections between our Modern American Society and Fahrenheit 451 society. Technology is a problem in both our society as well as the book’s society. According to the article, “Robots and AI Taking over Jobs” it says this. “AI is expected to replace 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025” (Thomas). This means in the next 2 years AI is going to take 85 million people's jobs, only to allow big companies to make more
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them” (Bradbury). In the world of Fahrenheit 451, it is scary and dark compared to our society. In Fahrenheit they have to live with unnecessary laws versus our society we can live with laws that the people vote for.
The Power Of Knowledge People can rely on literacy and social awareness to help them be better aware and more thoughtful. But when people have neither of these skills it can harm the view they have on their surroundings. Fahrenheit 451 is an example of what would happen if social awareness and literacy were looked down on. In the society where the story takes place in not many are socially aware or can read. This lack of awareness and literacy drives people to take great lengths for their beliefs and wants, this is a problem because they don't think about the consequences their actions will have.
