Feelings In Fahrenheit 451

The Significance of Feelings and how Book Help Maintain our Humanity

“Where books are burned,
In the end, people will also be burned”
Heinrich Heine, 1823

Ray Bradbury paints a vivid image of a soulless and violent society which constantly functions without evolving. In his dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, books are abandoned and their concepts burned to ashes. People within the society are ignorant and robot-like, travelling through cities like ghosts, listening to voices talking to them. Bradbury uses the majority of the society to call his audience to realize the importance of being able to read books and comprehend their knowledge, such as understanding concepts of love, happiness and sadness which are essential in order for us to

The concept of love is most accurately presented by the relationship of the main character, Montag, and his wife, Mildred. Throughout the book, Bradbury presents their relationship as extremely empty and completely meaningless, Mildred’s complete self obsession being a major part of their distance. Mildred is completely swallowed up by her parlor walls, living with Montag more as a roommate than a partner, avoiding conversation and any possible connection. Montag in fact, starts questioning his happiness with Mildred once a “black cobra slid down a well looking for the old water and time gathered there” (12), referring to Mildred’s overdose. The words “old water and time” refer to problems within their relationship that have been existent for a long period and that neither of them, no matter how supposedly happy they think they are, are deeply miserable. The distance between two is even more apparent once Montag tried to make Mildred a part of his journey on reading and understanding the books. She turned against her own husband and eventually reports him in the firestation, calling a book alarm. Through these circumstances Montag becomes certain that “ he had lived with a strange woman who would forget about him tomorrow, listening to her Seashell Radio” (110), going on her own path, just as she wanted her whole life, being more

Sadness is taken away from the society in order to create a society that trusts the government and does not care about why a thing is done. Montag’s society is extremely vast “that [they] cannot have [their] minorities upset “ (56) since that would mean that people would find concerning materials and that will indeed cause the government even more concerns besides their ongoing wars. If everything is provided and theories that cause thinking are taken away, then the nation should have nothing to worry about. Sadness is an excessively important strand that brings people to evident conclusions and thoughts, that once shared create a stronger bond between people as well as understanding of mistakes and actions taken in the first place leading to this sadness. It is a form of emotion that allows humans to learn from their mistakes and obtain knowledge, being shared by books this emotion is capable of leading people on to life - changing ideas, filling each and everyone with even more intelligence. However, once taken away the balance of natural happiness and sadness is destroyed, leading people into complete