Comparing The Real World In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Since the birth of the science fiction genre with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, science fiction has been a catalyst for social change and a medium for social commentary. Science fiction gives authors a unique opportunity to comment on the potential downfalls in society, by displaying hyperbolized, negative characteristics of our real world. These exaggerated instances open readers' minds to the potential dangers they may have never noticed before. Any reader of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 can feel for the main character, Montag, and his growing disdain for his idolized, “perfect” world that is full of censorship - and find themselves even growing to hate the overly technological world of Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury’s choice of science fiction

Writer Sheila Schwartz mentions this phenomenon, claiming that science fiction “is a bridge between all cultures as it summarizes and expresses the nightmare fears, myths, and inescapable concerns of all people today”. At the time Fahrenheit 451 was published - 1953 - America was a couple of years out of World War II, in which Truman allowed America to drop two atomic bombs: one on Hiroshima, and one on Nagasaki. As the fear created within the American public was evident, Bradbury makes atomic bombs (and smaller bombings as well) an everyday part of society in Fahrenheit 451. Montag mentions this overuse of atomic bombs by mentioning how “we've [Montag’s country] started and won two atomic wars since 2022” (Bradbury 69). By the end of the novel, Montag’s entire city is destroyed by an atomic bomb, which destroys everything he had ever known. Through this display of the future - if technology continues to be used for destructive purposes - Bradbury makes the social statement that the world is bound to destroy itself through nuclear war. This result was a fear prominent in the American public, which was visualized through the futuristic, technological world of Fahrenheit

Montag realizes how dysfunctional and dystopian society is in Fahrenheit 451, and frees himself by escaping beyond the river. Maria Anwar labels this integration of the authors as “self-reflection”, where Bradbury “addresses the audience by commenting on the novel’s events at times as a third person omniscient narrator or by using Montag as a mouthpiece” (Anwar 248). This self-reflection reveals Bradbury’s awakening and his actions are the only way to prevent the destruction of society. Montag’s escape, preservation of knowledge, and rejection of technology free him from the bounds of technology that the masses in Fahrenheit 451 are captured in, and by using Montag as a positive protagonist, Bradbury reveals his ideas to save the destruction of the species. Bradbury suggests that people must become aware of the fault in society and actively oppose them, like Montag evidently did throughout the