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Conformity In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

799 Words4 Pages

In a dystopian world of Bradbury, society is expected to conform to the government’s rules, typically through propaganda or technology. The citizens' perspectives on life is limited and constricted because of the mass spread of propaganda. They are led to believe that they are happy, when in reality they are living in a state of oblivion. When people are unaware of what is going on, their thinking is limited. This causes a lack of new, creative ideas, restricting the society’s ability to grow and improve. This is shown in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, where Guy Montag, a firefighter who burns and destroys books, realizes that he isn’t truly happy, and that books contain the answer to being free. Opposing him is Captain Beatty, his boss …show more content…

After Montag and the other firemen burn down a man’s house filled with books, he “trie[s] to imagine […] just how it would feel […] to have firemen burn [their] houses and [their] books” (Bradbury 37). Bradbury characterizes Montag as empathetic by showing that he is putting himself in another person’s shoes and wondering what they would have felt. He is becoming aware that his job isn’t as perfect as he thought it was, and realizes that hewhat he does harms people. Bradbury reveals how Montag slowly transitions into becoming someone who doesn’t conform to society . Bradbury builds on this transformation by using freedom and happiness as an example. When Montag seeks help, he explains that “[they] have everything [they] need to be happy, but [they] aren’t happy. Something’s missing…[he] thought books might help” (84). Montag is characterized as an outsider and a rebel because he realizes that nobody is truly happy. After all, they can’t see past all the technology. Even with almost any kind of entertainment at Montag’s disposal, he refuses to blend in because he is starting to learn that everyone is mindless. Bradbury takes this a step further when Montag “thought books might help”. Books were believed to be dangerous, but Montag figuresd out that they could be the answer to breaking free of the chains of conformity. By depicting Montag as an individualist, Bradbury shows how freedom can be achieved through becoming a free

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(MIP-1): In Ray Bradbury’s, Fahrenheit 451, Montag starts out as a flawed person who agrees with his society. (SIP-A): Montag is a person who agrees with his society. (STEWE-1): Montag enjoys his job as a fireman in his society, “It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (1). He is fond of the smell of kerosene and enjoys burning books and houses.

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People who travel abroad seem to enjoy sending back reports on what people are like in various countries they visit. A variety of national stereotypes is part and parcel of popular knowledge. Italians are said to be "volatile," Germans "hard-working," the Dutch "clean," the Swiss "neat," the English "reserved," and so on. The habit of making generalizations about national groups is not a modern invention. Byzantine war manuals contain careful notes on the department of foreign populations, and Americans still recognize themselves in the brilliant national portrait drawn by Alexis de Tocqueville more than 100 years ago.

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Within the first book of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the fireman Guy Montag had changed to a societal outcast through questioning the conformity ingrained into his mind. After burning a woman for refusing to leave behind her books, Montag talked with his wife Mildred about why she would essentially commit suicide for books. In this epiphany, he realizes “‘There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house” to which Mildred then replies “She was simple-minded.” (48). Because Montag burned this woman, unlike the rest of society shown in the microcosm of his wife, he begins to question the illegality of books instead of adamantly questioning the criminal.

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Bradbury portrays how Montag’s perception of fire and burning books with his personal development changes by the different choices he makes throughout the novel. In the beginning of the book, Montag has a great passion and

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Conformity In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

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Bradbury uses characters to embody the repercussions of excessive conformity in the form of discontentment. As "Bradbury's message is not in... any single one-dimensional character," many characters contribute to his theme of conformity (Connor 416). Guy Montag and Captain Beatty, in particular, represent the unhappiness from forced submission and the resulting casualty. Guy, a fireman who was previously enthralled in book burning, realised the repression it wrought and he revolted against the system he once submitted to.

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Choosing to be your own person rather than being like everyone else can feel empowering after a struggle. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, reading books is a crime. A “criminal” who is caught reading a book goes to jail and the fire department has to burn the book. After Montag, a firefighter, finds himself ignoring rules, he is caught by his chief and is forced to run away, in search of new books and people who understand him. After he finds a group of retired professors.

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Garcia also talks about how “We as a population no longer think for ourselves” (Garcia 49). This quote confirms criticisms that Bradbury had about society, in that communism sprouts from the ideas of political polarization, people who do not think for themselves can lead to a dangerous society, which was seen in Fahrenheit 451. Garcia relates this to the media, which control the power to influence people based off their views, a powerful tool that is being

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A predominate theme in Fahrenheit 451 is conformity. Bradbury utilizes the contrast between Mildred and Clarisse to compare the ideal, conforming citizen to the non-conforming outcast of society. Society believes that “books make people unhappy, they make them anti-social” (Bradbury 8). It also believes that the citizens should all be alike, equal and politically correct as to not offend “dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchant, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico” (57). Mildred conforms to these requirements, but Clarisse marches to her own drums.

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Imagine living in a world where people are not allowed to read books or to have access to information. Living in this kind of a state might mentally cripple a person or even lead to a world where innovation does not exist, because people are not allowed to explore and think for themselves. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag demonstrates the difficult and isolating battle of one man against an oppressive government. In Montag’s struggle, he loses his job and his wife, yet he gains a sense of internal freedom by choosing to leave the city and to continue to read books. In order to control the citizens of the dystopian civilization displayed in Fahrenheit 451, the government censors the information the population receives about every detail in their culture, so indoctrination of the citizens is fairly easy to achieve; however, the nature of humans is to live in a state of freedom.

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In the novel Fahrenheit 451 conformity and individuality is something to talk about. Conformity and individuality are very important themes in Fahrenheit 451 and in modern life. The novel demonstrates how individuality is very rare. Is about modern America. Without individuality today, everyone would not be different and would follow someone else trends and everything about them.

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Webster’s Dictionary defines individuality as “the quality that makes one person or thing different from all others”, and conformity as “behavior that is the same as the behavior of most other people in a society”. John F. Kennedy says, “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” Oftentimes, much like in Kennedy’s case, individualism is praised over conformity, labeling the former good or courageous and the latter bad or lazy, because individuality fuels change, whereas conformity prompts a societal stasis. However, it needs to be taken into account that humans are, in Aristotle’s words, social animals and thus, in societies as complex and intricate as ours, stasis suggests stability, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

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“A time to keep silent and a time to speak,” (158) is a quote from the book Fahrenheit 451. This novel is all about how people conform to a society that burns books. They do so because they make people “think” thoughts that the government doesn’t want them to. Though there are some who are not conformed and read books to enlighten themselves to the ways of the past, that changes the way they see the present. Mildred, Faber, and Clarisse are characters that represent different aspects of conformity or nonconformity in the Fahrenheit 451 society.

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Do you choose to conform? or is it something you do without even thinking about it? Conformity is a theme consistently found throughout Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury illustrates how conformity is not always a choice and not conforming is a choice through the characters Montag, Faber and Mildred. Some people spend their entire life conforming to society, and can not imagine what being an independant thinker is.

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