Reading: It is Worth It Reading has been a part of human interaction for thousands of years. Whether it was runic, Cyrillic, or hieroglyphic characters, the ability to communicate personal opinions through written text has been a crucial part of our society. However, many attempts have been made to repress this concept of free press. For example, Emperer Qin Shi Huang attempted to eradicate all books contray to his ideas. Likewise, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is currently destroying books which preach non-Islamic viewpoints. In his book, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury reaffirms this very concept: without books, true knowledge is lost. When knowledge is lost, the human populace becomes mere animals, reduced to a primitive state in which all they care about is pleasure. Thus, when society stops reading, it crumbles. …show more content…
The events of the book take place in a dystopic world, one that is blissfully, and woefully, ignorant. However, this is how the government wants it to be. Ignorant people do not think for themselves and will believe anything they are told. This comes back with a bite in the end of the book when the technologically advanced city is destroyed in a mushroom cloud of atomic radiation. In fact, Mildred at the time was "leaning anxiously nervously, as if to plunge, drop, fall into that swarming immensity of color to drown in its bright happiness" (Bradbury 152). Clearly the idea presented by the dystopia in which Montag lives, and the lives led there, is one that reinforces the concept that when people don 't read, they become ignorant and the world as the know it both figuratively and literally