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Greed In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

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(AGG) “Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none” (DeVos). Some people think that money can buy happiness, but it does not give anything more. (BS-1) In the book Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the main character, lives in a society where people are obsessed with the materials around them. (BS-2) Therefore, the author includes affects that the materials have on people. (BS-3) However, the society also has rebelled with an exception to the people who aren’t obsessed with the objects. (TS) Ray Bradbury creates a society of materialistic people, obsessed with having too much, all the while warning the reader about the dangers of greed, through the example of a few characters.

(MIP-1) …show more content…

In the past quote, Mildred did not want to turn off the TV for her husband which is a little shocking. Her love for TV is more than the love for her husband. (SIP-B) These people love accumulating more fancy and expensive items. (STEWE-1) Mildred loves her material, and she only cares about objects. She asks Montag for everything. She expects them from him, she does not care if there is a money shortage. Mildred only uses Montag for the money. When Mildred raises the point about another TV, Montag brings a financial issue up, but Mildred does not care. Mildred cares more for the price for the TV than she cares for Montag. “‘It’s really fun. It be even more fun when we can afford to have a fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall- TV put in/ It is only two thousand-dollars.’ ‘It’s one-third of my yearly pay’” (18). The past quote, Mildred takes the money that Montag earns for granted she doesn’t care how much he is earning. Mildred is greedy in buying items for herself. (STEWE-2) When Mildred is with her earphones, she will never take them off. Even when she sleeps, she will not take them off. …show more content…

(MIP-3)There are few people in the society who are the exception and are not addicted to materials. (SIP-A) An exception to this is the main character Montag. (STEWE-1) When Mildred has her overdose and the two men come to help her. Montag notices that they use a vacuum, Montag does not like how everything is based on technology. There is a machine to do everything for everyone. The items are taking over the peoples life, and it is solving all of the problems they had. “The vacuum hissed at him. The emptiness…. The nothingness…. He held his breath so that the vacuum could not get into his lungs” (111). (STEWE-2) Montag is also an exception because he is completely against the thought of any person watching TV. Montag thinks that watching too much TV is going to make their brain go dead. Montag thinks that Millie’s brain is giving her thoughts that are unnecessary and not useful. “And then he came to the parlour where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their white thoughts and their snowy dreams.” (11). (SIP-B) The other exceptions of people in the society who are not obsessed include Faber and Granger. (STEWE-1) Faber is another example of an exception. In Faber’s house there is nothing that is special. There are no objects or TV’s. There are just walls and this shows that he does not care about the way that he views things. Faber does not care about how things look, and the amount of money he pays for things. Faber cares more about the people he meet and the

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She even asks Montag for another wall, but she already has three. Mildred considers the walls of TVs as her family. She also treats them better than she does her husband. When Mildred is with her TV family she does not want to turn it off. “Will you turn the parlor off?

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She is not worried about anyone besides herself. It is easy to assume this when she states, “That’s my family.” She says this referring to the people that come on the parlor. Montag asked Mildred to turn off the parlor and she would not because that is her family. This makes her self-centered.

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In fact, no one is even allowed to know anything because of government laws, so they have nothing to support their false claims. In addition, the bumps and falls in Mildred’s life do not bother her, and when Montag asks her if she lives with true happiness, she responds “I am… And proud of it” (62). She fakes to be joyful and satisfied, and she never asks “why?” about anything,

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(STEWE-2) Besides asking questions about society’s relationships, Montag questions further and starts asking about society’s rules on burning books after he experiences a woman burn with her books. He says to Mildred, “'There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.'" (Bradbury 48). Montag, before, had blindly followed and enforced society’s rules about burning books.

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(CS): Society in Fahrenheit 451 is very materialistic, due to advertising and always focusing on the physical things that one

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(10) The 'she ' the quote refers to is Montag 's wife, Mildred, and she is

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Fahrenheit 451 Essay In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 society is corrupt. People only know what the government wants them to know and the government is controlling this by making everyone believe communication is bad. Also the people have little knowledge because books have been outlawed and destroyed. By not having knowledge the people believe anything the government tells them but what they don’t know is that there are major wars going on that are getting covered up.

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Ray Bradbury’s novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ warns of the dangers of technology and blind obedience through the character of Mildred Montag amongst others. Although Mildred is a minor character throughout the text, her image as the poster girl of the dystopian vision of the future Bradbury had created highlights that in a society where technology is all-powerful and all-consuming, true happiness is seldom found. Bradbury depicts characters who have an awareness of life outside of technology to be genuinely happier and more sincere, whereas those who have conformed to mores of society are consequently dissatisfied with life. Ultimately, it is Montag’s realisation that there is more to life than shallow conversations and parlour walls, and the happiness

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(MIP-3) In addition, this dissociation extends to the society one lives in. (SIP-A) As a result of their cultivated, materialistic lives, characters in Bradbury’s novel are isolated from their own society. (STEWE-1)

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Though they are material things and objects, they are viewed as people while “books aren’t real people.” Mildred said that if she looks around, there isn’t anybody. When she turns on the T.V. she says “my family is people. They tell me things;I laugh, they laugh! And the colors.”

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Mildred is very obviously detached from most facets of life that we value. She doesn’t remember meeting her husband, and she watches TV constantly. She tries to overdose on pain medication and Montag wishes that “If only they could’ve taken her mind to the dry cleaner’s and empties the pocket and steamed and cleansed it” (Bradbury 14). Seeing that he wishes his wife’s brains could be cleansed is a sharp contrast to how we consider how modern marriage is supposed to go.

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For example, after Montag burns an old woman with her books, he and Mildred converse saying “‘It’s a good thing the rug’s washable’”(53). This quote shows that Mildred is more concerned about an inanimate object than the person who is dead. The citizens are shut away from the world and the lack of the free thought creates an objective view of the world. The people in this society no longer have personal feeling and opinions of their own; they go about their lives with the emotional detachments of robots. The

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What were they going to do? Well, said Mildred, wait around and see” (42). What followed was a display of colors and sounds, and the people were back to shallow words again. The TV that everyone spends their lives watching does not have a plot, purpose, moral or point. It is nothing more than unconnected sentences, bright colors and loud noise.

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