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How Is Fahrenheit 451 Relevant Today

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Fahrenheit 451, the novel written by Ray Bradbury, is one of the most influential and popular books of the dystopian genre. It follows the character Guy Montag as he begins to realize that the world around him is not as perfect as he once thought, and that the government he has been working for may be barring him from trying to access the truth and find his purpose in life. The book itself also holds many parallels to the time period in which it was written, the 1950s. The 1950s was a period of fear for most, as it was in the aftermath of World War II and in the midst of the Cold War. Bradbury uses multiple elements of his dystopia, such as government control, superficiality, and a consumerist culture, to comment on and communicate his concerns …show more content…

If they started searching the whole damn river, it might take all night. So they’re sniffing for a scapegoat to end things with a bang. They’ll catch Montag in the next five minutes!’” (Bradbury 148). This passage encapsulates Bradbury’s growing concern with how people are becoming rushed and want something easy to watch (Pendery 52). The government is faking catching Montag because it knows that the people of America aren’t used to having to wait or think they’re in danger because there’s a criminal around, they think they must have an ending so that everyone can continue their lives normally.. Bradbury was concerned about the superficiality of the world, and how people only seemed to care about presentation, not the actual contents of anything they have been watching or consuming (Seed 228). Montag’s journey is that Bradbury is showing this concern (Zipes 128). Through Montag, Bradbury shows the discovery of the truth and how Montag is starting to see things the way they actually are, where the general population are only concerned with endings and physical appearances. i.e. a zipped 128. To reiterate, Bradbury’s use of dystopian themes in Fahrenheit 451 is a vehicle for his commentary about his concerns about the world after World War II and during the Cold

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