Changing Relationships In Fahrenheit 451

While everything seems to change, relationships and the value that they contain seem to change the most. Compared to fifty years ago, the value of people and the relationships that are had with them now has changed drastically. This is shown especially through the novel Fahrenheit 451, it reveals a grim reality where our society is completely different. The dynamic of family and friends is extremely warped in this book, relationships appear to have little value due to the lack of connection between people and the increase in distractions from the outer world. A myriad of factors are responsible for this change in society, political, mental, ideological, economic, or emotional, but there are three main points that really stand out as a catalyst

These new innovations made the characters in this book alter how they interacted and brought their society to a somber place where little interaction took place in families. If people did get into conversations then they lacked meaning and meant virtually nothing, this is shown through the carefree and laziness of people in this novel. Near the beginning of the book Montag comes home to his wife, Mildred, who had overdosed on sleeping pills. In today’s society that is a fairly significant issue, but because of the invention of the “snake machine”, introduced in the book, that would simply pump out the patient’s blood, replace it and pump the stomach, this serious suicide attempt turns into an everyday thing. In fact, the people who do this procedure are not even doctors, just some handyman doing his job, this whole procedure is also done in the comfort of your own home. All of the regular consequences that we associate with overdosing are non-existent, instead of a hospital visit, complications, and counseling, you just have a minor stomach pump and get your blood entirely replaced and you are good to go! Undeniably,

In Fahrenheit 451 this is most certainly not the case due to the glaring disconnect from each other, even though they are married or related in another capacity, it seems as though family means hardly anything to most of these people. A paucity of communication is awfully abundant in this world, so much so that it is peculiar to Montag when he sees Clarisse McClellan’s family is talking and socializing with each other. This is because nearly every single conversation Guy Montag has with his wife in this book has no depth, simply just a surface level conversation that should be heard between two strangers, not a couple who has been married, let alone married for ten years. Also, they seem to just not enjoy talking to each other as much, everybody mostly keeps to himself or herself. This is insanely different from today, people strive attention and conversation with others. People in our world could not live in the same world that Fahrenheit 451 takes place in because communication does not have the same emphasis that it does in our world. This in turn made family and friends mean little to everyone in their society because they do not have any significance to them. Mildred’s and Guy’s marriage is a grand example of this, Guy asks his wife, “When did we meet? And where?” This illustrates how