In a society where mindless activity suppresses people’s activity of the brain, nothing significant or influential will result in life. The people are not knowledgeable to understand the circumstances they live in. The most damaging effect begins when life becomes insufficient without meaning. Due to the constant enjoyment, life ends up trivial and full of displeasure. Similarly, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the society in which books are subjected to be destroyed emphasizes the effects of the control of human thought. Through a series of mind-opening events, Montag, a book-destroying fireman, suddenly realizes that the society that he lives in is meaningless and dissatisfying, leading to his conclusion that he does not know anything anymore. Clarisse McClellan is a young girl who is very different from …show more content…
Thinking to himself about the simple but complicated question, Montag enters his bedroom and states that “He was not happy […] He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (Bradbury 9). In this moment, Montag goes through a period of self-realization. He contemplates how he was never truly satisfied and always in denial of dejection, making him go through life without a meaning. He understands how he lived a fake existence, one with a mask that covers his true emotions and feelings. Ultimately, his realization of himself living a miserable and unimportant life causes him to declare his confusion of not knowing anything anymore. When Montag opened his windows to get night air, he heard the laughter that “blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse […] Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way” (Bradbury 14). Hearing the laughter of Clarisse and her family, Montag realizes how he has not had the enjoyable moment of laughter in a long