Government Surveillance In Fahrenheit 451, By Ray Bradbury

Aaron Persky Mrs. Hodge English Lang & Lit I H 26 March 2024 Looking Over Your Shoulder Government surveillance is an often overlooked subject of discussion. In recent years, as the internet has allowed more information to be spread about the actions of a nation, government accountability has proven to be increasingly difficult. The governments of nations continue to defend their outlandish and dystopian activities under the guise of “national security”. In the book Fahrenheit 451, Beatty gives Montag remarks about how they have kept records and watched the Mclellans carefully. In the book, Granger tells Montag about how “the authorities track the movements of people and store the data. The patterns of the people are recorded for years and from the data, they can see their

Fazaga” is an example of government overreach and is vastly reflected in the world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In the story, the government is incredibly entwined into the daily lives of its citizens. In the story, Clarisse, while talking to Montag, says that her uncle was once arrested for being a pedestrian. This is shown in the text when she says, “My uncle was arrested another time—did I tell you? —for being a pedestrian. Oh, we’re most peculiar.” (Bradbury 21). This story is elaborated upon in the short story “The Pedestrian”, where it is shown that while walking down the street at night, a man is thrown in a cop car and taken to a psychiatric center. This demonstrates how both the story of Fahrenheit 451 and the story of “FBI v. Fazaga” share many similarities, especially in government surveillance. Fahrenheit 451 becomes increasingly more realistic as the daily lives of people continue to change. Government surveillance is more prevalent than ever, and it is more out in the open than ever. This proves how government surveillance is often invasive and often defended by the judicial system created to protect the citizens, but instead attacks